9 of the Best Queer Video Games of 2023

See All 2023 End of Year Lists

Every video game is gay when I’m the one playing it. I’ll invent narratives and flirt with NPCs even if the in-game choices don’t strictly allow it. I did it for the first two Horizon games (more on that later), Control, and more. I’m queer, so games I play are queer, that’s the way I see it. That said, as the years go on, more and more games have actual canonical queer elements, so I’ve put together this list of the best queer video games of 2023. (Side note, I’m not going to include Hogwarts Legacy even though it supposedly has a trans character because JK Rowling doesn’t deserve your money or attention.)

Before we get into this list, there are two things you should know about me: I love playing video games, and I’m perpetually behind on the new and hip video games. I didn’t play the first The Last of Us game until 2021. So I’m going to tell you about the queer video games I do know about and/or have played, but I especially love hidden gems and indie games, so if I missed any, PLEASE let me know in the comments.

With that said, here are some of the best queer video games of 2023!

The following includes mild spoilers for all the games listed.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Swearing fealty is gay, just saying.

This addition to the Legend of Zelda franchise is the most open-world yet, asking you to think outside the box. You can explore, build, adapt, and create to your heart’s content. Plus, it’s visually stunning.

Now, this game isn’t necessarily as explicitly queer in the way the others on this list are. However, almost every single gay gamer I know played and loved this game. Heather once posited that maybe Link’s androgyny and lack of dialogue makes it easy for queer and trans people to imprint on him. And you can read whatever you want into Link and Sidon’s relationship.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available to play on Nintendo Switch.

Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

Cute witches are cute.

In this narrative adventure game, you play as Fortuna, an exiled witch who has decided to rebuild her tarot deck from the ground up. As you play, you collect cards and you get to design them. You spend “energy” to choose the backgrounds and pieces and then you can arrange them however you want, so your deck is uniquely yours. You also give readings, aid fellow witches, and help people through issues like gender dysphoria, mental health struggles, and more. Each decision you make impacts the story, and while you’re reforming your deck, you’re also forming relationships with the people you help. The style is old school, the music is soothing, and the whole thing is very queer and witchy. (Which might be redundant to say; all witches are queer, this is known.)

Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is available to play on PC and Nintendo Switch.

Unpacking

I didn’t even know how gay this little Australian game was going to get when I arranged those stuffies in rainbow order.

Okay so this might be cheating a little because technically this game was released on PC and Switch in 2021 and Playstation last year, HOWEVER, it was released on iOS and Android this year and also I happened to play it this year (on PS5) and it’s one of my favorite games I’ve ever played. It has simple, retro graphics and simple, soothing gameplay; really, it’s what it says on the tin. The goal is just… unpacking. You start in 1997, where you unpack the main character’s childhood bedroom, and move with her through her life into dorm rooms and apartments, moving in with significant others and out again, through a little over a decade of her life. There is no dialogue, and the only words you read are between chapters, no more than a sentence or two that appear like captions under a photo in a scrapbook. And yet, somehow, it tells a really powerful story. You learn so much about the character as you unpack her things, including that she’s a queer nerd. Gameplay is super satisfying, and everyone has their own way of organizing things, though occasionally something will be “wrong” and you have to find a new home for it, either for story reasons or because no one else’s brain works like mine. It’s a really beautiful game.

Unpacking is available to play on PC, Mac, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Linux, iOS and Android.

Fae Farm

Books and scrolls are my love language, too. (Screenshot taken from YouTube user Eeowna)

While some people may be quick to call Fae Farm “just another farming sim” anyone who loves farming sims will tell you a) the limit does not exist for how many cozy games we can love at one time or play in a row and b) Fae Farm puts its own twist on the classic genre. In this game, you land on a fantasy world full of humans, faeries, and elves, and you need to help them solve some problem and save their world. I love a task-based game, and this one adds a little extra oomph with dungeons and battles. Instead of Stardew Valley‘s pixelated style reminiscent of Gameboy days, Fae Farm is closer to Animal Crossing, or even Dreamlight Valley.

There are six romanceable characters, and you can flirt and date as many of them as you want. You can even date them long enough to get married; that is, unless you’re playing multi-player and someone else gets to them first! But all six characters are player-sexual so as long as you bring them gifts and go on dates, any of them are an option for you to romance. Including but not limited to a black-winged cutie named Pyria who collects scrolls. It’s a perfect little cozy game for escapism in the form of resource gathering, crafting, fishing, and, of course, farming.

Fae Farm is available to play on PC and Nintendo Switch.

Coral Island

A lot of these ladies look extremely gay, imho.

On a similar note we have Coral Island, a very new farming simulator game that my friend Taylor called, “gay Stardew with mermaids.” Also with very Dreamlight Valley-style graphics, you can try to woo any of the whopping 25+ romance options amongst the over 70 villagers you can meet while you farm and craft and dive! You can even marry another player in multi-player mode, and regardless of who you marry, you can also have kids and raise a queer little family on your farm. You could even be poly; while you can only date one person at a time, once you’re married, you can romance a second person and marry them, too. Like in other similar games, you have to work your way up to romance with these characters, talking to them daily and giving them gifts based on their preferences and personality. And when you’re ready to propose, you better make a visit to the blacksmith so you can put a ring on it.

Coral Island is available to play on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation

Thirsty Suitors

I don’t know about the suitors but I am thirsty for Tyler.

In this adventure game, you play as a young queer woman named Jala who returns to her hometown for a family occasion and must confront her many exes and suitors like an Indian Ramona Flowers. These exes include but are not limited to Jala’s ex Tyler, who is a Black woman with a hot goth aesthetic who is looking out for the queer kids in the community, and who is voiced by trans actor Christine Rose Schermerhorn.

You skateboard around accepting tasks and quests, some narrative (e.g. helping two boyfriends mend their relationship), some skate challenges. There are also cooking minigames, turn-based battles, conversations with dialogue options, and more. The style is very comic-book-esque, and you do flips and tricks as you go — not just on your skateboard, even when doing simple tasks like washing your hands before your mother teaches you how to make parathas. South Asian culture permeates this stunning game, and in fact most if not all of Jala’s exes are people of color, which makes sense because of who created it. Thirsty Suitors is the latest game from Annapurna, the video game publisher and developer that has produced some of my favorite games, like What Remains of Edith Finch, Gone Home, I Am Dead, and Stray, and it was written and created by Outerloop Games, whose website describes them as “a minority led, fully distributed indie game studio that creates accessible games with depth about underrepresented cultures and themes.”

Thirsty Suitors is available to play on PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation.

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores

It’s always funny seeing screenshots of games like this when someone isn’t wearing the same outfit you usually have Aloy in.

The Horizon Forbidden West DLC, Burning Shores, is more of the Horizon games we love, with stunning graphics, smooth battle mechanics, and intricate stories unfolding in this post-apocalyptic world where man and machine live side by side.

I started playing the first game in this franchise, Horizon Zero Dawn, in February 2020, and because I loved Aloy (and a side quest) so much, it took me a year and a half to finish. (I did take a few months off because of pandemic brain but that is neither here nor there.) I was pleasantly surprised there was no forced romance in the storyline, since as the game went on I could tell that despite the open-world nature of the game, there was definitely a main story that was going to happen no matter what I did, and sometimes that’s where forced romances come in. But no, Aloy had machines to take down, mysteries to solve, and a world to save, she didn’t have time for romance. Even right before the last battle, when I tried to get Aloy to ask Vanasha to join her for one last night, Aloy wouldn’t acquiesce; she needed rest, and she was right for that. Horizon Forbidden West went similarly, with no romance options for Aloy, which again I enjoyed because I was enjoying Aloy’s character development as is, but was pleasantly surprised when more and more sapphic stories popped up around her. I was happy enough with that.

Enter: Burning Shores. In this bonus story, we get Aloy’s first on-screen love interest… and it’s a woman! Be still my heart! I don’t know exactly what it is about Aloy that made it clear to me from the start that she was some shade of queer; maybe it was her take-no-shit attitude, maybe it was her outsider storyline, maybe it was the fact that she is voiced by queer nerd Ashly Burch, maybe it was because when I unlocked facepaint in Forbidden West I immediately slapped the progress flag on that redhead’s perfect freckled face. This feels inevitable to me in the very best way.

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning shores is available to play on PlayStation 5.

Stray Gods

I was going to edit my face out of this screeshot but I think seeing how red and excited I got is proof I mean what I say when I say this game is gay.

Stray Gods has a lot of ingredients to love individually: it’s a narrative roleplay game, it has a queer protagonist, it features modernized versions of Greek gods, and it’s a MUSICAL. Add that all together with the bright, colorful graphics and you get a truly unique and magical game. In the game, you play as Grace, voiced by the incomparable Laura “BAFTA” Bailey, who is thrust into the world of gods living among us by a muse, voiced by Laura’s Critical Role castmate and legend in her own right, Ashley Johnson. In fact, the whole cast is stacked with familiar voices. Other Critical Role alum include Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, Anjali Bhimani, and Khary Payton (who you probably also know from The Walking Dead). The Last of Us‘s Merle Dandridge and Troy Baker, Flanaverse’s Rahul Kohli, queen of the nerds Felicia Day, nonbinary legend Erika Ishii, queer actress Allegra Clark, Sex Lives of College Girls‘ Lauren “LoLo” Spencer, Broadway alum Anthony Rapp, and the one and only Papi herself, Janina Gavankar. (I’m sorry, I know she has done so many other things and I genuinely love her and get so excited when she pops up in any TV show or movie I’m watching, but also she will always be Papi to meee.)

As you try to solve the central mystery, you make dialogue choices that change the course of the story and the songs being sung — and not just the lyrics, the style of music, too! You also have the option to flirt with up to four characters: your roommate Freddie, goddess of the underworld Aphrodite, the mischievous god Pan, or perpetual sad boy Apollo. And yes, you better believe I played it twice to romance both female options (and get new song options) and the story was so drastically and deliciously different each time. What’s nice is, even if you chose to have Grace romance Pan or Apollo, it doesn’t automatically de-queer the game. There is a pride flag in Grace and Freddie’s apartment, Erika Ishii’s Hermes is nonbinary and everyone in the game effortlessly uses they/them pronouns for them, and Persephone makes it clear that she is queer in more ways than just having an alternative lifestyle haircut. It’s extremely queer through and through, and you can make it as fantastical gay as you want, all while enjoying supremely talented singers and making snap decisions about how you want the story to unfold.

Stray Gods is available to play on Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.

Baldur’s Gate 3

Shadowheart made me glad I recreated my half-elf druid instead of my moon elf cleric of Selûne otherwise she DEFINITELY wouldn’t have wanted to flirt with me.

If you’ve been on the gay gaming internet at all in the past few months, you’ve probably heard of Baldur’s Gate 3, but I’m going to tell you about it anyway! Baldur’s Gate 3 is an open-world, high fantasy role playing game where you get to create and name your own character, then embark on an adventure set in Faerûn, a world familiar to most people who have played Dungeons & Dragons 5e. And to answer a question I initially had: no, you do not have to play Baldur’s Gate or Baldur’s Gate 2 to play Baldur’s Gate 3. In fact, This third game takes place 120 years after the events of the second game, so you’re dropped into a whole new story.

I knew BD3 was based on D&D, but I didn’t realize how literally it was until I started playing. It’s truly like playing digital D&D when it comes to skill checks, turn-based combat, the race and classes of characters you can play, spells and other actions, and how one impulsive decision can drastically change the course of the story. Unlike the Horizon games, there aren’t really any guardrails. You just kind of… wander around until you stumble upon a quest and start following breadcrumbs from there. While you go, you collect companions for your party, and the game is so open-world that I was traveling around with just my girl Shadowheart until I realized all the battles I kept stumbling into weren’t meant for just two Level 2 characters, and had to double back and find more friends.

As you progress through the story, you will meet eight romanceable characters, and potentially win their favor. When creating your character, you can select your pronouns, body and face, genitals, and voice all independently of each other. None of this will affect whether or not a romanceable NPC will be into you; that is determined by dialogue choices and your actions throughout. I haven’t finished this behemoth of a game yet, but one thing I can tell you is that maybe you didn’t plan on romancing a character until you see “____ disapproves” and your heart breaks and you realize actually maybe yes you do want to romance them. Also, I’m saying “romance,” but this game gets spicy and you can do quite a bit more than “romance” them.

It’s an imperfect game (there is an alarming amount of fantasy racism right out the gate… I’ve been playing D&D with queers who love to play tieflings so long and with so many DMs who just ignore the “people hate tieflings” idea that it took me aback at first) but it’s a fun, epic adventure. The graphics of this game are beautiful and complex, and D&D has always been as queer as you make it, so it’s fitting that Baldur’s Gate 3 follows suit.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is available to play on PC, Mac, Xbox, and Playstation 5.

I hope this list gave you a solid rundown of some of the best queer video games of 2023, the queerness in each, and maybe inspired you to check one or two you’ve yet to play. And again, I do hope you’ll tell me which queer games came out this year that I missed! (Rest assured, one thing I learned in researching this piece is there will never be a shortage of dating sims out there that include queer and/or player-sexual options.)

It’s worth noting that this year has been… rough for the gaming industry. In September, Epic Games laid off about 16% of its workforce, approximately 850 employees. Bungie laid off about 100 employees, and Ubisoft laid off 124, most from its Canadian studios, plus there were layoffs at Amazon Games, Digital Bros, Humble Games, and Kongregate.

Always, but especially now, be sure to support queer games whenever and however you can! What are your picks for the best queer video games of 2023?

Queer Dungeons & Transgender Dragons: Exploring Gender Through Imagined Worlds

Feature image and all other queer Dungeons and Dragons art from the 10th edition of the Player’s Handbook.

When you hear the words Dungeons and Dragons, who immediately comes to mind?

Hold on to that.

D&D, for those who have never played before, is a tabletop roleplaying game. To give the simplest description of how the game operates: Players assume the identity of a fictional character and make improvised choices based on their character’s background and disposition. The success or failure of their choices is dependent on the character’s individual abilities and an element of chance (in the case of D&D, the roll of a twenty sided die). The narrative of the game itself is facilitated by a Game Master or Dungeon Master, who describes (and/or creates) the world in which the players explore. They also act as every other character the players come in contact with, and present the players with challenges, obstacles, and rewards.

I, a trans woman, have been running games for the last eight years. Of the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours I’ve played D&D (among many, many other games) the most meaningful game I’ve ever played has been the one-on-one game I run for my boyfriend, Max. Our first session started in a Virgina hotel room, the day after he got top surgery.

While it might seem like an inopportune time to introduce him to tabletop role playing games, my reasoning was based on a non-insignificant amount of scientific research about the therapeutic potential of TTRPGs. I wanted him to spend the days after this momentous, transformative moment feeling like a hero. I wanted him to live in a world where his gender was nothing less than euphoric in every moment. Between our shared imagination and a series of dice rolls, this silly, beautiful, magic game enabled that.

If you play TTRPGs, you know a trans woman named Rowan who plays D&D is, at this point, simply a cliche. But if your primary exposure to D&D is through Stranger Things, or those two episodes of Community, you probably wouldn’t imagine anything I just said to be possible. You may have been made to feel (directly or indirectly) like D&D “wasn’t for you.” You’ve probably imagined all D&D players as cishet white men, who live out violent colonial fantasies in a world of make believe. And if you were basing those ideas on D&D’s 1974 origins, you wouldn’t be wrong.

D&D: A Problematic History

As Antero Garcia explains in his article Privilege, Power, and Dungeons & Dragons, D&D developed out of the wargaming communities of the mid 20th century. That gaming culture was composed largely of cishet white men creating games for other cishet white men. As Garcia states, the social rules of the game world plays “a significant role in shaping the experience and limitations on players’ experiences.” The experience player’s have at my table is not the same as D&D co-creator Gary Guygax’s players, because the ideologies that inform the game’s worldviews are fundamentally different. To put it lightly, old school D&D was severely limited in its cultural imagination.

Cis women weren’t even mentioned or included as playable characters until four years after the game’s initial debut — despite the lead designer’s daughter being a playtester. The original rulebook exclusively refers to players and NPCs as men. The following edition of the game, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, acknowledges this choice and says, “These names can easily be changed to the feminine if desired. This is fantasy—what’s in a name? In all but a few cases sex makes no difference to ability!” How progressive.

Of course, if you chose to play as a woman, your maximum strength was lower than that of a man. Even in these men’s fantasy worlds, women couldn’t possibly be stronger than men. To describe the multitude of ways the historical foundation of D&D is steeped in colonial hierarchy would take a whole other article and a thousand hours of twitter discourse.

Though pockets of that culture certainly still exist, the vast majority of people engaged in the hobby today firmly reject that worldview. D&D has had a cultural reckoning, with the most recent edition (fifth edition or 5e) attempting massive overhauls to make the game more inclusive to queer people and people of color.

The introduction of 5th edition, with more streamlined rules and inclusive language, made D&D more accessible and popular than ever. That increase in popularity was aided by actual plays like the all-trans, POC-led Transplanar, or Dropout’s Dimension20, where queer and trans players have been present in every season of the show.

For those uninitiated, “actual play” is a narrative medium in which one or more people create an improvised show by playing a tabletop role-playing game like D&D. According to a preliminary study conducted by AP and TTRPG Historian Dr. Emily Friedman, of the over 4300 respondents who consumed ttrpg-related content, “female-identified and non-binary [audiences] are the majority in every age group, and that increases with each younger generation.”

So how do we find ourselves here? How did we go from this history to Dimension20’s Dungeons and Drag Queens, where four iconic queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race tell a beautiful story by playing D&D. (Yes, really. Jujubee, Monet X Change, Alaska, and Bob The Drag Queen. Honestly, go watch it right now. Finish the article later. I’ll wait.)

It’s simple: In worlds that reject our humanity, queer people have always imagined new ones.

Queer D&D As Transgressive Social Play

At its core, D&D is a vehicle for storytelling, a vessel for play. Through play, we can take risks in the safety of a fictional container. According to Garcia, “the opportunities for transgressive social play” are only limited by what possibilities are presented by the game itself. And if anyone’s good at transgressive social play, it’s queer people.

When you’re playing a TTRPG, you aren’t just creating a new self. You’re creating a new world, where anything is possible. “In so many ways, the only limit you have when playing TTRPGs is your imagination,” said Connie Chang, creator of Transplanar and designer of the game Godkiller. “Sure, there are rules and lore depending on the system you’re playing, but there’s no cop looming over your shoulder, telling you what you can or can’t do at your table.”

For those of us intimately familiar with the arbitrary limitations of binary gender expression, this isn’t too strange a concept. Gender itself is a game that every queer person learns to play very early on.

In the real world, imagining new ways of being and relating are essential to developing a sense of one’s queer or trans identity. In D&D, your character’s gender is entirely yours to invent. When you’re already embodying the experience of a half-elf or a cat person, playing a person of another gender — perhaps one that aligns more with your own — isn’t all that strange. From there, anything is possible.

“When I first started tabletops I was a cis pansexual man,” said Dare Hickman, a performer on Transplanar. “As I played with femininity with my characters (namely elves, the way they performed androgyny really spoke to me), I found myself more comfortable with queer expression.”

That level of exploration doesn’t just happen as a player though. As a Dungeon Master, or the individual running the game, the ability to explore every facet of gender is exponentially higher. “Running NPCs was so valuable in my gender journey,” said J Strautman, game designer and co-DM of the actual play show Planet Arcana. “At the drop of a hat I would have to try on a new gender, new pronouns, a new name, even a new voice. It wasn’t long before I found myself doing the same out of games.”

“As a game master, I embody hundreds of different characters over the course of a campaign,” said Chang. “It’s a way for me to explore my own sense of self alongside my players in a curated, creatively brave space — not just my gender, but other aspects of my identity as well.”

That new-found understanding doesn’t stay contained to the world of the game. The lessons learned at the table stay with you forever. “When we play at gender (both in a game space and outside of it) the being we are changes,” said Jay Dragon, award-winning designer of games like Wanderhome and Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast. “TTRPGs helped me realize that all of life is character creation. My gender is another game I get to play with people around me; my identity and my pronouns [are] strategic tools of self expression, some inarticulate way of gesturing towards a deeper truth that no one can see. A character is a mask, and my gender is another mask, and both of them are ways I can become something more.”

Only As Queer As Your Table

Unfortunately, our internal understanding of our identity is constantly confronted and in conflict with the biases and expectations others assign to our physical bodies. If gone unexamined and unchecked, the systems of oppression that underpin our world will permeate systems within the game. To quote Garcia, what is possible to explore in a TTRPG is limited by the “constraints of what a gaming system will allow.”

The mechanical rules of old school D&D create an experience catered towards the biases of its creators. More modern versions of the game, played by a vastly queer demographic, offer many more possibilities, but are still limited to how far from D&D’s euro-centric fantasyland roots your table is willing to venture. Like any piece of art, the politics and social norms of your game are dependent on the worldviews of the people telling the story.

It wasn’t simply playing as an elf that facilitated Hickman’s internal exploration, it was the composition of the people at her table and the world they collectively created. “After I began playing at a mostly trans table,” said Hickman, “I was able to explore that sense of comfortability even more.”

That level of exploration simply wouldn’t be possible at a table occupied by players with a “traditional” understanding of D&D. Among those transformative tables Hickman has played at, maybe none have been so visibly trans as Transplanar. An explicitly anti-orientalist, non-colonial actual play, Transplanar is helmed by performer, writer, and game designer Connie Chang — whose identities inevitably shape the type of stories they tell, allowing for a more expansive reality of what TTRPGs have to offer.

“Being queer and trans […] informs the way I see the world from a foundational level.” said Chang. “When I worldbuild as a game master, I don’t define societies around gender roles or assign innate abilities or behaviors around gender.” That doesn’t mean the worlds of Transplanar are genderless. In fact it’s quite the opposite — Gender is brimming from every corner of their fabricated universes. “The concept of gender does exist, but it’s not used as a tool to oppress women and queer people. It’s playful. It’s fun. It’s euphoric and idealistic and so much more creatively enriching than playing at tables where real-world transphobic, queerphobic, and misogynistic philosophies around gender are uncritically upheld.”

Of course, not everyone is as enthusiastic about Transplanar’s radical imaginings. “Some (straight, cis, male, white, pick your combo) people sneeringly ask, ‘That sounds BORING, so everyone gets along? WHERE’S THE DRAMA?’ which I honestly think is hilarious,” said Chang. These comments aren’t a reflection of the show’s content, but of the limitations of their critic’s biases. “If you can’t imagine ways to create conflict outside of sexist, racist, transphobic, and/or homophobic violence, then your imagination is quite small.”

The Limits of D&D

Though D&D has the most name recognition, it’s only one of many games in the endless medium that is TTRPGs. “TTRPGs, in their most compelling form, are mechanisms for delving into elaborate social systems and dismantling them from the inside,” said Dragon.

Most contemporary approaches to gaming lean into the medium’s flexibility and dependance on the enthusiastic investment of the people playing. “Many game books even straight-up tell you that you should use the rules that you’re excited about and discard the ones that won’t work,” noted Chang. “This is the core and greatest advantage that TTRPGs have over other ludic vehicles such as video games: the medium itself cannot restrict you. A TTRPG is just a bunch of words on a page; if you don’t do exactly what they say, what’re they gonna do, papercut you to death?”

Games like Chang’s, Dragon’s, and Strautman’s enable exploration beyond binary imaginings of gender. “As part of the character creation process,” said Chang about their game Godkiller, “the player selects or creates a gender for their character, the titular Godkiller. The options include stuff like god’s tongue, wretched, haunted, and queer. Of course, you can always make up your own so you can name your gender however you want — e.g., woman, nonbinary, trans man, etc. But the default settings are a bit weird and monstrous by design, to decenter cis ways of imagining the world.”

Dragon’s games use gender as a central method of play and exploration. “Sleepaway, my first game, uses gender as a canvas to discuss queer existence outside belonging, playing with gender in a space where gender has permission to function as a game. My later projects, such as Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, imagines gender as a kaleidoscope of expression, an allegorical tool, and a literal method of community building.”

Strautman, who’s games like Insatiable Cravings and Contact focus on themes of shifting and body modification, said TTRPGs enabled them to understand what gender means for them beyond physical presentation and pronouns, “I find that process very spiritual and difficult to grasp, but easy to access when I’m able to comfortably be a different person for a set period of time. It’s the same feeling I have when I try to explain to someone that I just ‘know’ what my gender is. I just know.”

Though many people have used TTRPGs to explore their gender, the act of ineffable self discovery is just breaking the surface of what games can do for people — queer or otherwise. “TTRPGs are not special because they can crack some people’s eggs,” said Dragon. “I don’t make games about egg-cracking — I instead am seeking a way to radicalize gender, and shift away from the liberal framework of gender as identity to a framework of gender as action, gender as weapon, gender as a mask. I think games are a framework to accomplish this.”

TTRPGs as Tools For Liberation

As much as TTRPGs can facilitate exploration of more intrinsic aspects of one’s humanity — morality, confidence, empathy — they can replicate dehumanizing elements as well. “Games are just as much in danger of maintaining oppressive systems as they are able to challenge them,” said Dragon. Dragon’s interest in games focuses primarily on “their function as a way to liberate ourselves and step deeper into the game-state of surviving at the end of the world.”

This liberation is similar to what Chang is attempting to enable for themself, their players, and his audience through Transplanar and her work in the TTRPG ecosystem at large. “I collaborate to imagine worlds that don’t currently exist, but that we hope one day will. Because I intentionally play with other trans and queer people and people of color, these worlds undertake liberational and revolutionary approaches to gender, race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, and so many other axes of marginalization,” Chang said.

“The real world hates, fetishizes, oppresses, and exploits us enough already. But in our imaginary worlds, we create possibilities and, most importantly, joys surrounding our experiences as marginalized people. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: trans joy is revolutionary. Transphobes want us invisible, maimed, dead. Sometimes, there is no greater act of resistance than simply being alive, euphorically and unapologetically. Playing TTRPGs with other trans people who get this is an indescribably affirming experience. It’s a way to be in genuine queer community, where we’re all playing gay disasters trying our best to save a world that actually loves us.”

Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook illustrators: Steve Argyle, Tom Babbey, Daren Bader, Drew Baker, Mark Behm, Eric Belisle, Christopher Bradley, Noah Bradley, Sam Burley, Clint Cearley, Milivoj Ćeran, Sidharth Chaturvedi, Jedd Chevrier, jD, Allen Douglas, Jesper Ejsing, Craig Elliott, Wayne England, Scott M. Fischer, Randy Gallegos, Justin Gerard, Florian De Gesincourt, Lars Grant-West, Jon Hodgson, Ralph Horsley, Lake Hurwitz, Tyler Jacobson, Kekai Kotaki, Olly Lawson, Raphael Lubke, Titus Lunter, Slawomir Maniak, Brynn Metheney, Aaron Miller, Christopher Moeller, Mark Molnar, Scott Murphy, William O’Connor, Hector Ortiz, David Palumbo, Alessandra Pisano, Claudio Pozas, Rob Rey, Wayne Reynolds, Aaron J. Riley, Chris Seaman, Cynthia Sheppard, Craig J Spearing, John Stanko, Matt Stawicki, Alex Stone, Thom Tenery, Cory Trego-Erdner, Beth Trott, Autumn Rain Turkel, Jose Vega, Tyler Walpole, Julian Kok Joon Wen, Richard Whitters, Eva Widermann, Ben Wootten, Kieran Yanner

From Birdetta to Flea: 12 Trans Video Game Characters From the 80’s and 90’s

Feature image of trans video game characters from Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VIII, Leisure Suit Larry 6, Final Fight, Super Mario Bros 2, and Final Fantasy V

For as long as I can remember, escaping into imaginary worlds full of adventure, magic, and fantastical beasts in novels and comic books has been one of my all-time favorite pastimes. But as much as I love to read, I really love to game. My first video game console was a broken PlayStation 1 passed down to me by my older brother. The only games I had were Spyro and Ready 2 Rumble Boxing. Spyro is still one of my favorite games today — that purple dragon has a special place in my heart — but Ready 2 Rumble let me live out another fantasy. While I have never had any interest in boxing or any other athletics, in this game I could play as a female character, and no one could stop me. At school, I got made fun of for being too feminine, but in video games, I could just be the girl I’ve always known myself to be. Shoutout to Sony for being my first ally.

Every trans person finds some way to express themselves before they find an accepting environment. For many of us, video games were that outlet. Today we live in a world where video game publishers create canonically trans characters, but what about before the Transgender Tipping Point? What about before I was even born?

I did a deep dive on all the retro video game characters that fans believe to be trans. I searched through Reddit, Tumblr, YouTube, and everything in between. I expected to only find a few characters, but I underestimated the nerdiness of our community. We’ve laid claim to a ton of people throughout the 80s and the 90s, and I love that for us. I also found quite a few trans characters were created for humorous purposes. I don’t love that. Whether we’re claiming a beloved, aspirational character or simply being mocked, the following characters are proof we’ve always been in the vast world of gaming.

Birdetta AKA Birdo – Super Mario Bros 2 (July 1987)

The first canonically transgender video game character is Birdetta who is also known as Birdo. Debuting as “Catherine” in the Japan-only PC game Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic from Nintendo, Birdetta was described in the game manual as “a man who thinks of himself as a female.” When the game was re-released in September 1988 in North America under the name Super Mario Bros 2, the game manual stated “He thinks he is a girl and spits eggs from his mouth. He would rather be called ‘Birdetta.” This insensitive language is very representative of the 80s, a time where many people were aware of trans women but invalidated our existence. Today Birdetta is seen as a trans icon in many gamer spaces, and she is still a major part of Mario’s pantheon of characters.

Tessy LaFemme – Caper in the Castro (May 1989)

In May 1989, C.M. Ralph created the first known video game with queer and trans themes. This point-and-click, murder mystery game follows Tracker McDyke, a lesbian private detective, as she searches San Francisco’s historically queer Castro district for her kidnapped friend, a trans woman named Tessy LaFemme. Ralph released Caper in the Castro as charityware and spread it through early bulletin board messaging systems. The game came with a short message asking people to donate to an AIDS charity of their choice. For years, the game was thought to be lost, but in 2017, an emulated version of the game became playable through Internet Archive.

Poison – Final Fight (November 1989)

Anyone who has gone to a video game arcade knows about Street Fighter. Created by Takashi Nishiyama, Hiroshi Matsumoto and Japanese video game company Capcom, this is one of the highest-grossing franchises in the world. In November 1989, Final Fight, a spin-off game, was released. Beat ‘em up games usually consist of buff men brawling with other men, but Final Fight was a game changer for gender representation with Poison, a non playable character (NPC), that players go up against. Poison was introduced as a member of Mad Gear, an enemy gang, in Final Fight, and her gender has been a long-time debated topic.

As game developers prepared to release Final Fight in the United States, there were concerns about how beating up a woman would be perceived. Poison and her palette-swapped gangmate Roxy were deemed “newhalf” which is derogatory Japanese slang for trans women. This change in character origin is obviously transphobic, for it implies that hitting a transgender woman is the same as hitting a cisgender man. When the game made it to Super Nintendo, a playtester in the States complained about the protagonist hitting women which led to the removal of Poison and Roxy. Capcom has since tried to retcon the origin story for these two by describing them as trans women who have undergone gender-confirmation surgery, crossdressers, and cis women. Street Fighter producer Yoshinori Ono stated, “Let’s set the record straight: in North America, Poison is officially a post-op transsexual. But in Japan, she simply tucks her business away to look female.”

Like a lot of trans women, people can’t seem to make up their mind on whether or not they see her as a legitimate woman and have a lot to say about her body. The controversy surrounding this fictional character isn’t all that dissimilar from any trans woman in the spotlight.

Yasmin – Circuit’s Edge (1989)

Developed by Westwood Associates and released by Infocom in 1990, Circuit’s Edge is a point-and-click adventure game based on the novel When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger. In this game, players follow Marîd Audran, a private detective, as he goes on a cyberpunk, dystopian journey through the Budayeen, a lively quarter of a fictional Middle Eastern city. During the game’s first quest, players meet Yasmin who is described as Audran’s “long-time ex-girlfriend, although she hadn’t been born female.” Audran uses her as a source of information. While Yasmin has no further appearances, other characters are specified as trans throughout the game.

Frozen Half – Akumajō Special: Boku Dracula-kun (1990)

Released by Konami, Akumajō Special: Boku Dracula-kun created for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) which is known in Japan as the Famicom. It follows self-proclaimed Demon King, Kid Dracula, as he wakes up from a long term sleep and learns that he’s been challenged by a demon named Galamoth. Kid Dracula journeys through Castlevania to go after Galamoth and fight Galamoth’s army. During the ice stage of the game, Galamoth’s servant, Frozen Half, attacks Kid Dracula. In the game manual, she is described as okama, Japanese slang that can refer to trans women, gay men, and/or crossdressers depending on the context. When Frozen Half later appears in 1991’s Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, she’s described as “newhalf” and has had a redesign where she appears more traditionally feminine.

Various Characters – Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender (1992)

Before Y: The Last Man there was MicroProse’s Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender. In this point-and-click adventure game, players follow the titular protagonist Rex as he searches for a missing vase on Terra Androgena, a strange planet that seems to be solely inhabited by cis women. To continue procreation, the women on the planet created a machine, the Cosmic Gender Bender, to change their sex for short periods of time. One could argue that this game is full of trans people since the inhabitants swap genders at random. According to blogger Martin Smith of TransmitHim!, the game’s biggest challenge is putting up with “out-dated, casual chauvinism and transphobia.” Sounds like a regular Tuesday to me.

Faris Scherwiz – Final Fantasy V (1992)

The Final Fantasy franchise is beloved by many trans and queer people. I’m a huge fan myself, so when I learned there was a gender nonconforming character from the early 90s, I flipped out. In 1992, Japanese video game publisher Square (succeeded by Square Enix) released Final Fantasy V for Nintendo’s Super Famicom which is known internationally as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Born Princess Sarisa Scherwil Tycoon, Faris was lost at sea and raised by pirates to be a boy. Faris goes back and forth between masculine and feminine pronouns and wears masculine clothing. Many fans have claimed Faris as a trans or nonbinary character while others see Faris as a masculine woman. Either way, she is the first known playable gender nonconforming character in a video game.

Shablee – Leisure Suit Larry 6 (1993)

The Leisure Suit Larry franchise consists of 10 releases and three remasters where users play as titular character Larry Laffer, a middle-aged cis white man with no game. In these adult-themed sex comedy games, Larry attempts to seduce young women with few success stories. Leisure Suit Larry 6, like the five releases before, is a PC point-and-click game, but in this edition, players meet Shablee – the first Black trans character in a video game. She is a “dark-skinned makeup artist” Larry meets at a resort. After the two hang out, they begin to hook up and Larry learns Shablee is trans. When he pulls out a condom, Shablee takes it and puts it on her own penis instead. Larry has a violently transphobic reaction to her reveal which prompts the game to misgender her by referring to her with masculine pronouns. After her reveal, the narrator of the game quips, “No wonder Shablee knows what a man likes” in the classically transphobic “gotcha!” action that ruled the 80s and 90s.

This was the most disheartening discovery I found during my research. The first Black trans character in a video game was created to be ridiculed and then discarded by society. Larry throws up after seeing Shablee’s erect penis and is seen washing his mouth out the following morning because he kissed her. The scene is reminiscent of Stan (Evan Peters) in season one of Pose who washed his mouth out after kissing Angel (Indya Moore). Shablee represents so many of the girls who never made it beyond the 90s because a man they came across couldn’t handle their attraction toward them. Shablee represents our fallen sisters of yesteryear like Rita Hester, Venus Xtravaganza and Dorian Corey. In many ways, Shablee represents me and the girls of today. We are all just trying to live our best lives, but the bigots of the world rather see trans women as punchlines in their own stories as opposed to fully realized human beings with something to offer. There is no mention of Shablee after her date with Larry, but I like to imagine she found a man actually worth her time.

Boethiah – The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994)

The first game in the Elder Scrolls series, The Elder Scrolls: Arena was released in March 1994 for Microsoft. This open-world RPG fantasy game takes players on an adventure through Tamriel, a large continent full of various cultures, magical creatures and supernatural forces. Arena was one of the first games with a realistic day/night cycle with shops closing at sunset and streets clearing at night when monsters roam until morning. Throughout the series of monster-fighting quests, players meet Boethiah, a Daedric Prince, who shifts between female, male and genderless personas. Boethiah is another character with a debated gender history. I think it’s pretty fair to call Boethiah nonbinary.

Flea – Chrono Trigger (1995)

Developed and published by Square, Chrono Trigger was released for Super Nintendo and is the first game of the Chrono series. As of March 2003, Chrono Trigger was Square Enix’s best-selling game with nearly 2.7 million units shipped. This RPG allows players to time travel to different eras from prehistoric to the Middle Ages and a post-apocalyptic future. Throughout their quests, characters battle enemies, make friends, gain allies and obtain magic. One of the boss characters is Flea whose gender has been interpreted differently by many players. In the game, characters refer to Flea as a woman, but Flea says, “Male… female… what’s the difference? Power is beautiful, and I’ve got the power!”

Sheik – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)

Zelda has a fierce queer and trans fanbase. Many fans of the franchise have argued that the main character Link is trans. Others have made an argument for Princess Zelda herself because of her alter ego. In 1998’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Princess Zelda goes into hiding as a boy named Sheik to get away from Ganondorf, a tyrant, and to guide Link during his quest. Some argue that Sheik is trans because Zelda used magic to change herself, but other people believe it was just a change of clothing. Either way, it’s giving gender nonconformity, and we love that. Welcome to the Alphabet Brigade!

Adel – Final Fantasy VIII (1999)

Many characters in the Final Fantasy franchise have been speculated to be trans or gender nonconforming because of their appearance. Adel is a special case. In 1999’s Final Fantasy VIII, players come face-to-face with a powerful sorceress who has caused a lot of confusion for people in the fandom. While the game indicates that only women can be sorceresses and Adel searches for a girl to be her successor, her pronoun usage shifts depending on the language used. In the original Japanese dialogue, no gender is indicated. In English, feminine pronouns are used. In French, both masculine and feminine pronouns are used. In the Italian version of the game, she is given the feminine name spelling “Adele.” I began looking through game forums, and I quickly exited each one because the transphobia was too much to handle. Whether or not Adel is canonically trans is irrelevant, she’s a fan favorite for being a certified badass.

HONORABLE MENTION: Samus Aran – Metroid (1986)

I debated including Metroid’s Samus Aran on this list. Out of all of my findings, Samus Aran has caused the most heated gender debates I’ve seen over a fictional character. In 1986, Nintendo released Metroid, the first mainstream video game featuring a playable female character, as stated by Guinness World Records in 2013. In 2015, The Mary Sue published “Metroid’s Samus Aran is a Transgender Woman. Deal With It.” which sparked a lot of controversy. The article currently has around 2300 comments. In 1994, the game developers were asked by the writers of the official strategy guide of Super Metroid if Samus had any secrets. Hirofumi Matsuoka worked on the original design for Samus and claimed she “wasn’t a woman” but actually “newhalf.” Since then there has been discussion on whether or not to take this offensive commentary seriously. For many fans, this is enough which would make Samus Aran “canonically a 6 foot 3 transgender woman,” as Twitter user JinkiesJerrica stated. The people stating that she isn’t trans are going off physical characteristics which feels pretty transphobic.

Trans people exist in every form of media, and we always have. In video games, like in film and television, a great deal of our past representation was created with malice. But despite these poor intentions, we reclaim our narratives with pride.

Hopefully Nintendo will give Samus a coming out party one day soon. Either way, I think I’ve found my next cosplay idea.

This piece is part of our 2023 Trans Awareness Week coverage. Our Senior Editor, Drew Burnett Gregory, felt like cis people were plenty aware of trans people in 2023 thank you very much, so this week trans writers will be taking us back into recent history — specially post-Stonewall (1970) to pre-Tipping Point (2013).

Fae Farm Is Your New Stardew Valley — Including, Yes, Gay Marriage!

The first review I read of Fae Farm was meant to be scathing, but it completely sold me on the game in the opening sentence, which was basically: “Fae Farm is just like every other farming sim; if you love Stardew Valley, I guess you’re gonna love this too.” And I do love Stardew Valley! In fact, I would go as fas as saying that Stardew Valley has been my constant companion through some of the toughest times of my life! Everything’s always okay on Hoagie’s Homestead! Anyway, yes, Fae Farm is very much like Stardew Valley, which is very much like Harvest Moon, which is very much like if The Sims had some acreage, and that’s just the way these things go.

The opening story is pretty straightforward: You get shipwrecked in the enchanted world of Azoria. Luckily, the mayor who finds you all washed up on the shore happens to have a farm he’s jonesing to give away, and you are the lucky recipient. You grow some crops, you collect some resources, you make some money, you explore. The more you learn, the more you can craft — potions, furniture, farm equipment — and the more you craft, the more you level up. You can sell stuff in the market overnight, like when Mayor Lewis comes around and collects your crops from your bin in Stardew. And you can also buy so many home furnishings at the market. And unlike any other game I’ve ever played, the furniture you choose gives you all kinds of bonuses to things like health and charisma.

But it’s not all work, work, work. In Azoria, you meet all kinds of other villagers in your new magical home, some who you can romance. All the marriageable characters are playersexual, meaning they’re whatever sexuality matches up best with yours. If you’re playing a bisexual enchanted farmer, you can date anyone. If you’re playing as an overalled homosexual farmer, you can date only women. And they’ll all be so happy to date you back. You can also date everyone or no one. None of this Cassandra Pentaghast rejection in Azoria! In total, there’s 15 new buddies, and you can romance six of them. But don’t lollygag! You can play with a co-op of up to four people on the Switch, and you can compete for the affections of the romance-able NPCs.

I am one of the minority of Stardew Valley players who love both the mines and fishing, and I am so pleased that Fae Farm also includes little dungeons! You’ll have to upgrade your tools to fight more powerful Jumbles as you progress, which you can, of course, do by simply living out your farm life, growing and collecting and selling things. And there’s fishing! Which isn’t as challenging as Stardew but is more challenging than Animal Crossing, and you don’t have to sit through a single pun about the Sea Bass (…at least a C+!). The name is Fae Farm, so you know there’s magic afoot — and, in fact, it’s everywhere. I won’t spoil any surprises for you, but the magic here is way more accessible to the player than in any other farming sim I’ve played.

The farming and fighting and collecting part of Fae Farm is really, really fun. The social parts, however, aren’t nearly as good as Stardew Valley, which does make sense because every dang character in that glorious game has a beautiful, fully-realized story arc if you spend enough time getting to know them. But if your love of farming sims, like mine, goes all the way back to FarmVille on Facebook, well, these cozy chores and rewards are for you!

The Teal Mask Is a Sweet, Shiny Addition to Pokémon Scarlet & Violet

When I loaded up Pokemon Violet onto my Nintendo Switch last week, to download the game’s first little DLC, I was shocked by how excited I was to find myself back in Paldea. I put a hundred hours into the game when it came out last November, but it turns out I was hungry for more. Super hungry. Miraidon-staring-down-a-sandwich hungry, in fact. I’ve already logged another 30 hours, even though The Teal Mask isn’t a huge addition to the game, land-wise. It takes place in the landlocked Kitakami region, which has more real-life Japanese influence than really any of the other games so far. Very cool.

The Teal Mask boasts 200 new and returning Pokemon to the game’s Pokdex, including Dipplin — the new final evolution of Applin — with a special shiny move where Syrup Bomb changes color from red to yellow. Pokemon’s first shiny moves in the video games! There’s a wild new Legendary that’s like four Legendaries wrapped into one! (Plus even more Legendaries.) There’s a new way to earn a LOT more shards for your various fashion and Terastallize-swapping needs! But best of all, The Teal Mask builds on the sweetness that the base game gave us in all our main character stories last time around.

Keiran and Carmine are a brother/sister duo who become your friends and rivals in the Teal Mask. Carmine’s one of those chaotic big sister hard-asses with a heart of gold you can only uncover if your spend enough time earning her trust. Kieran is an often-overlooked sweetie who is maybe the first NPC in history who doesn’t just happily let you character shove their way onto the scene and soak up all the glory and Legendary Pokemon. (Hop could never!) Much like Arven’s story in the main game, Keiran and Carmine will surprise you. You’ve played enough video games to know their type, but before you even realize it, their narratives are flipped on their heads, making your heart growing like the Grinch. (OMG they’re metaphorically Terastallized!) The main story also ends on a kinda spooky note that sets up The Indigo Disk, the Scarlet & Violet DLC that will be out later this winter.

Ogerpon is one of the weirdest, wildest Legendary Pokemon I have ever seen. He looks like some little chaos fairy you’d accidentally stub your toe on in the woods and end up hexed by his adorable yet sinister laugh. Until you put one of his four masks on him and he becomes a powerhouse of chaotic awesomeness. The Teal Mask is his main thing but you can also get the Wellspring Mask, Hearthflame Mask, and Cornerstone Mask — all of which change Ogerpon’s type from straight-up Grass type to Grass/Fire, Grass/Water, and Grass/Rock, depending on which one you wear. Scovillain already proved how lethal Grass/Fire types can be, in the main game!

All the buggy issues from Scarlet and Violet persist in the DLC, with some annoying framerate drops at times, but honestly, that stuff didn’t diminish my enjoyment in the main game and it doesn’t here either. No, it’s not Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, but it’s still an open-world, above-ground Pokemon game with a zillion pocket monsters to battle and befriend and so many butchy clothes a gal can wear while riding around on the back of an ancient/future dragon.

https://youtu.be/LPUv2rOZ8ws?si=8BMRxbsNLzPxDT7O

The Journal-Planner That Turned My Real Life Into a Video Game

One of the toughest things I had to give up when I got sick with Long Covid was my morning ritual of journal-planning. I’d been doing it for years and years: just me, a good-smelling candle, a cup of coffee or PG Tips tea, my favorite fountain pen of the moment, the morning sunshine, and my journal covered in nerdy queer stickers. Every morning, every single morning, I wrote down thoughts, feelings, dreams, frustrations. I logged my gratitude. I made any necessary updates on my small but active ENEMIES LIST (just kidding! kind of!). I also planned my days, my weeks, my years. I tracked my goals and my progress toward achieving them. I made lists of chores and daily tasks. The neuro-cognitive dysfunction of Long Covid made it harder to keep up with everything going on my journal, but the real problem was my newfound weakness and fatigue. My journal-planning time had always been full of hope and feelings of success. I’m a middle-age butch lesbian. I owned my to-do lists. But in those days, my journal-planning became a living, screaming record of all the things I could no longer do. Endless broken lists I was too sick to even attempt to finish.

As I started making progress in managing my Long Covid, I began thinking about journal-planning again, but I just couldn’t make myself do it. I had at least a little bit of trauma around those first few months, every morning, when I opened up my cute little notebooks to see my failures from the day before glaring back at me. It’s hard to plan when you have chronic illness and disability because you never know, from day-to-day, what your body’s going to act like. Could be a perfectly regular day. Limited energy, sure! But energy nonetheless! Pain-free! Migraine-free! No dizziness or lightheadedness, no heart rate ofrblood pressure going berserk! Body controlling its temperature like normal, able to keep food and water down! Simply able to be upright! But, for me, not all days are like that. In fact, most days aren’t like that. Most days my body is doing something weird that limits my capacity to wholly commit to completing a full to-do list. I’ve made so much peace with how much my brain and body have changed in the last three-and-a-half years — but I still don’t love thinking about everything I can no longer do.

I now have one desk drawer full of empty notebooks and journals and planners because I kept buying them and also kept being too scared to do anything with them. Enter: The Hero’s Journal, a 90-day planner/journal that turns you into the main character in your own adventure, loading you up with tips and encouragement like cheese and bread for your cozy little traveling sack. You can choose a D&D-style classic fantasy adventure, a magical school, or the entire galaxy in space! First of all, there’s no blank pages, so that intimidation factor is immediately — poof! — disappeared. Instead, there’s illustrations that carry you along your chosen journey, and individual boxes for you to list out the things you’re grateful for that day, a list of the day’s allies, a list of the day’s threats, notes, tasks— and, right up top, a reminder of what your ultimate goal is and a place to add three things you can do today to help you reach that goal. Plus! A geeky inspirational quote!

The journal is divided into different acts, like a real story, and different weeks within those acts. You plot and reflect at the beginning and end of each week. There’s also a whole thing at the beginning where you learn about making yourself the main character in your own story.

When I first got the Hero’s Journal, I cracked it open and colored in the first week of pages. The journal is all black-and-white line-drawings, so it’s perfect for that. I didn’t have the courage yet to start planning or journaling my feelings, but I do love to color as much as I did when I was a little girl, and by the time I got through, I had made the world of Istoria even more inviting. At that point, I couldn’t help but use it the way it was meant to be used. I made it my own, and then I owned it!

What I’ve found is that the Hero’s Journal is more about the vibes, like cozy fantasy, than it is about actually making it to Mordor with a cursed ring in your pocket and hurling it into a fiery doom. Every day, the journal invites you to think about what you actually WANT to do, and what you’re really CAPABLE of doing, and it doesn’t guilt you about any of that stuff. It also invites you to celebrate your victories, no matter how small. Yesterday, my three daily goals aimed at my ultimate quest were simply: double daily electrolytes, give Socks and Dobby their medicines (x2), stretch neck + hips. I did all three of those things, which I wouldn’t have even considered actual tasks before I got sick, and was proud as heck of myself when I looked at them this morning. Because I know, even though they might seem small, they’re crucial in helping me reach my BIG GOAL.

The Hero’s Journal, for me, isn’t just about doing; it’s about really thinking of my own self and my own needs, and about my big whole life story I’m living out here. I’m learning to care more about who I am, as my life’s main character, than what I accomplish on my life’s adventures. Or, as my quote of the day reminded me recently: “Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.” If it’s good enough for The Last Unicorn, it’s good enough for me.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood: A Tarot-Making Game That Explores Gender, Grief, and More

When I downloaded Devolver’s new deck-building game, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, to my Switch, I thought I was getting a spooky little vintage-looking Pokemon-style card-collecting game I could play with half my attention while I listened to podcasts. What I got was a deeply moving piece of interactive fiction that explores depression, gender, community, and personal vs. collective responsibility set against an enchanting magical space backdrop. I cried multiple times playing CWS, even as I crafted the coolest tarot deck I’ve ever seen.

In CWS, you play as Fortuna, a witch with the power of divination who’s living alone on a tiny house on an asteroid because she’s been exiled from her coven for a thousand years. In a move of pure desperation, Fortuna breaks another coven rule and summons a Behemoth named Ábramar to help her figure out how to handle the coven. Fortuna is outraged, she’s violent, and she’s deeply, deeply depressed. (Just a word of warning that this game looks adorable, and is very sweet, but also includes mentions of suicide and self-harm.)

Ábramar helps Fortuna start re-building her own tarot deck because hers was seized by her coven before they exiled her. You choose your own sphere (background), arcane (main icon) and symbols (minor embellishments) for each card — and, like all deck-builders, your choices get more powerful, exciting, and artistic the more you play. Elements like Air, Water, Earth, and Fire are also associated with each card (and each decision you make with it), but that mechanic is a little hard to explain and much easier to just understand, intuitively, as you play.

Once you’ve got your deck going, Ábramar opens up access for other witches to visit you, which is how Fortuna learns what’s happening inside the coven and way out there in the universe. Each character who visits has a compelling backstory, and their struggles require you to make decisions during your readings that shape the story in significant ways. The game also only auto-saves, so you can’t go back and undo your magic, something that frustrated the heck out of me at first, but that was when I was only still paying half-attention, before this dang game came for my whole heart. Fortuna meets a witch with gender dysphoria, a witch struggling majorly with her mental health, a witch battling chronic illness; a witch mourning a devastating death; in fact, almost all of Fortuna’s visitors have highly relatable grown-up problems you get to help them address. You build relationships as you build your deck, and that’s just as rewarding as crafting your own tarot cards.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood’s soundtrack is melancholy and enchanting. The graphics are old school cool. And it’s just as accessible for noobs like me as it is, I’m sure, for real witches with loads of experience with the tarot. Devolver didn’t mess around with all the symbols and metaphors and iconology; clearly a lot of intense research went into this project. CWS’ gameplay lasts about seven hours, total, and I’ve now played the game twice with wildly different results. Usually when I play video games, I can’t make myself be a “bad guy.” I always choose the hero route and always steer clear of morally dubious factions. But my play-through of CWS where I behaved like an absolute dick felt completely warranted, based on what Fortuna’s dealing with, and also wildly cathartic to me, a real life woman full of feminist rage at corrupt institutions.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is queer spooky season catnip and it’s now available on Nintendo Switch and Steam.

My 10 Best Butch Haircuts in Video Games

Several years ago, as my wife sat beside me on the couch and watched me create yet another video game character with short, shaggy hair, she said, “Baby, why don’t you just go to the stylist and get your hair chopped off?” It seemed like such an easy question with such an easy answer — and she was right, of course: I’d been wanting to cut off all my hair for as long as I could remember. But, like everything that brushes up against gender in any non-conforming way, it was actually a tangled mess of feelings.

I was always getting mistaken for a boy growing up — because of the way I walked and dressed and talked and made intense eye contact with men, like some kind of wolf challenging the leader of the pack — and it always embarrassed my family to no end. It took me forever to even grow hair; my great-aunts took to sticking bows to my bald baby head with bubblegum for the first several years of my life. And when it was finally long enough to hit my shoulders and endure the wrath of a curling iron, my mom begged me to never, ever, ever get my hair “cut like a boy.” I’d broken so many promises to her. The least I could do was keep my hair long enough to go into a ponytail.

Video games really are one of the best tools of self-exploration for LGBTQ people. Straight cis dudes play out power fantasies in video games. Queer and trans people try on a bunch of outfits and body types and voices and makeup and hairstyles, and then go on quests to save the world/rebuild their grandfather’s farm while looking on-screen like they feel inside in real life.

I was thinking about all my butch-haired video game characters when I was at the barber this week, getting my very short hair trimmed even shorter. And so I decided to make a list!

Stardew Valley

I think it was my starfruit that brought all the girls to my farm — but probably my dapper style kept them coming back.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

I chopped my hair off in two phases in Animal Crossing, and I also went from brown to grey in this game! Growth! Beau loved it, saltlick.

Skyrim

No one stole my sweetroll.

Pokemon Sword & Shield

You catch Pokemon in a tracksuit; I catch Pokemon in a suit vest. We are not the same.

Pokemon Scarlet & Violet

Even this shiny Girafarig can’t deny how good I look with a silver swoop.

The Legend of Zelda

Aw, Linky. My favorite Long-Haired Butch. (Don’t tell me Link’s not a LHB, I’ve been calling Link a LHB for like eight years and Link has never once protested!)

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

Eivor’s got the gravely voice and bossy bottom energy to really drive the whole thing home.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Cassandra, how could you ever refuse this face? This elfin shaggy pixie?!

FIFA 21

If only there was a scoring celebration option to smooch Sue Bird.

Fallout 4

Okay you’re right: I didn’t play Fallout 4. It’s way too gory and squelchy for me. But I could only think of nine games for this post, and my wife l o v e d Fallout 4, so last night I asked her to make me a butchy character and she reinstalled the game and played for hours to get some gay clothes. I woke up this morning and she’d left these screenshots on the PS5 for me. And that’s true love.

MONOPOLY GO! Has Made a Monster Out of Me

My sister is bisexual and barely a year younger than me, so basically we’re gay twins. We’ve been inseparable from the day she was born, even though we now live 800 miles apart and haven’t been able to see each other since the pandemic started. The best way I can actually explain this is to say that one time, when I was four years old, I got a pair of pajamas for my birthday and because it was two pieces I immediately said, “Oh, one for me and one for Jenn!” and we spent the next several months with her wearing Spider-Man feetie pants to bed, while I wore a matching Spider-Man long-sleeve tee to bed. Another time, on a rare snow day in Georgia, she had the flu so I played in the blizzard directly outside her bedroom window the entire day, building her about 10 tiny little snow guys to look at from her bed. She was a thespian in high school and, unless I had a basketball game, I didn’t missed a single night of any play she starred in. Inseparable. We’ve also always been on the same team against everybody else, never, ever turning on each other — with one exception: Monopoly. For a pair of tender-hearts, we are both somehow absolutely ruthless at the game of Monopoly.

I had wondered, on occasion, if perhaps we’d grown out of the brutal way we played the game growing up. Like, you know, making our own grandmother mortgage every last piece of property and then hand over not only the cash and properties when she went bankrupt, but also her little silver thimble piece, so we could display in front of us for the rest of the game like some kind of hunting trophy. This week my sister convinced me to download the new phone game, MONOPOLY GO!, and I am only slightly ashamed to admit to you that: no, neither of us have grown out of being absolute monsters!

No, she’s not.

MONOPOLY GO! is an even harsher take on the original game. Yes, you move your little guy around the classic Monopoly board by rolling digital dice, and yes you pay up when you land on other people’s property — but! The point of MONOPOLY GO! is to build landmarks all around famous cities, which you do by making money from your properties, landing on Chance and Community Chest, and also knocking down your opponent’s landmarks with a wrecking ball and ROBBING THEIR BANK! You do those last two things by landing on railroads. My sister has been playing this game much longer than me, and has a whole group chat at work about it, and yet, every time I pick up my phone, she has ROBBED ME! Twice now — twice! — she has taken every last rainbow dollar bill from me, leaving me bankrupt! My brother-in-law is not out here pulling these rude hijinks! He’s attacking randoms in the game — always an option! — like little old ladies named Lulabelle from Facebook. Much less mean!

However, I must admit, I’m playing this game by asking myself what my actual favorite top-hatted person would do: And Anne Lister would stop at nothing to become a railroad tycoon!

I’m here to mine your coal and steal your girl.

Like all phone games, MONOPOLY GO! has a bunch of collectibles that allow you to earn more in-game currency and dice, like animal stickers, beach balls, surf boards, etc. When you run out of dice, you have to wait an hour for more; it’s like Candy Crush in that way. By which I mean: It’s always trying to get you to pay $2.99, but you can enjoy the game a lot without ever spending a real life dime.

One of my favorite things to do in MONOPOLY GO! is choose someone to attack based on the fact that they’re wearing MAGA gear in their Facebook profile photo and have been stupid enough to use that photo on a phone game. The thud of destruction is so satisfying, as is the noise of all their money ding-dinging its way into my bank. (I wonder how triggered they are by landing in jail.)

If you want to help me beat up a bunch of old Trumpies or help my sister beat up me, you should let me know in the comments that you, too, have become a monster playing MONOPOLY GO!

Yep, You Can Be Gay and/or Trans and/or Nonbinary in “Baldur’s Gate 3”

After three years in early access and six years in development, Baldur’s Gate 3 has finally, officially arrived. On PC and Steam Deck, at least. The PS5 launch won’t happen until September 6th, and the XBox launch won’t happen… for a while. Of course, longtime fans of the series are used to waiting. Developed by Larian Studios, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a Dungeons & Dragons RPG that originated in the 1990s and hasn’t had a proper sequel in over 20 years. A lot has changed since those early days, including the fact that Baldur’s Gate 3 — with its 174 hours of cut-scenes and 17,000 different possible endings — will now allow you to play as a gay and/or trans character, including being nonbinary and using they/them pronouns. There’s even gay sex scenes, like every good pen-and-paper D&D game.

Baldur’s Gate 3 takes place a century after the second game. The basic plot is that you’ve been kidnapped by mind flayers, who’ve invaded Faerûn and infected your brain with parasites called illithid tadpoles that will turn you into a mind flayer if you don’t do something to stop them. Luckily, you’ll find yourself freed, early on, during a battle with githyanki warriors and their red dragons, and you can begin your journey toward exorcising yourself. Joining you will be other survivors of the attack who also have the brain worms: human wizard Gale, half-elf cleric Shadowheart, high elf vampire rogue Astarion, human warlock Wyll, and githyanki fighter Lae’zel. Like actual D&D, your choices will be constantly subject to the whim of a dice-roll, which is both terrifying and thrilling.

As a lifelong nerd and gamer, this series was always sort of hanging out in the periphery of the video game compartment in my mind, but last December I read a Reddit thread called WHY IS EVERYONE GAY IN BALDUR’S GATE 3, and I haven’t stopped being excited since then. Essentially, all the characters in Baldur’s Gate 3 are “playersexual,” meaning that they will be attracted to the player, regardless of their gender or sexuality. Some gay gamers really hate this mechanic because they want to see fully developed NPCs with gay storylines, and I totally get that, but I also have been rejected by CLEARLY BISEXUAL Cassandra in Dragon Age too many times to thumb my nose at the idea that every woman in the game could be a possible romance option for me. Also, instead of having strictly gendered dialogue, you can choose a “neutral” gender, which will unlock they/them pronouns.

In terms of character creation, there are almost a dozen races to choose from, and each has their own unique appearances and physical permutations. Facial features, body types, and even genital options are customizable. Kotaku recently posted an 11-minute character-creation video to give you an idea of the myriad options available.

I cracked open the game last night and didn’t even get my character finished; there were just too many options to mess around with! But I can’t wait to finally get going. And, frankly, I don’t have much time to dilly-dally. The illithid tadpoles are already chomping away at my brain!

Hello Kitty Island Adventure Is Your New Animal Crossing

When I was a wee girl, I was absolutely obsessed with Hello Kitty, which makes sense, really. I did grow up to become a Cat Lesbian who still, at middle age, collects cute stickers (shut up, I’m cool). A few years ago, when Nintendo partnered with Sanrio to bring a whole bunch of Hello Kitty characters to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I rushed out and bought every Amiibo. I needed that Cinnamoroll tuxedo jacket! I needed those Kerokerokeroppi rain boots! So imagine how my cozy game-loving heart sang when I found out about Hello Kitty Island Adventure, the new life sim where you rebuild a dilapidated amusement park on a deserted island with Hello Kitty and all her pals!

My Melody? Yep, she owns a gift shop and bosses me around! Badtz-Maru? Mm-hmm, he has a comic book stand on the dock! Pompompurin? He’s definitely here, I met him on the plane, but he got lost when we had to jump out using balloons and parachutes and I haven’t found him just yet. (Don’t worry, I will.)

Hello Kitty Island Adventure is as close to Animal Crossing as any cozy sim I’ve ever played, and I’ve played a whole lot of them. You start out creating a custom character (either a cat, dog, or bird, of various sizes and head/body shapes); you choose from a limited selection of color palettes and outfits (which will, of course, expand later on); and then you get hurled from the sky onto an island with a zillion little low-stakes adventures to unlock, and the main task of making new friends. Like all life sims, there’s things to collect, things to craft, things to trade, things to give as gifts. There’s hats to dye. There’s furniture to build. There’s mysteries to unravel. There’s rooms to decorate. There’s puzzles to solve. And there’s endless little to-do projects as you create a thriving island for you, your puppy pals, and your visitors.

I’ve put about five hours into Hello Kitty Island Adventure since it landed yesterday, and my only real complaint is that it’s an Apple Arcade exclusive that has to be played in iOS devices. I don’t have a game controller for my phone, so it took me twice as long to do everything as it probably should have because the running mechanism involves dragging your left finger along the screen while jumping/talking/collecting things by tapping with your right, and I kept running head-first off the pier and into the ocean, or directly into cliffsides and palm trees. Because, well, it’s a phone game so I was also obviously watching TV while playing it.

One of the most surprising things about Hello Kitty Island Adventure is that it’s listed as a game for ages 4+, but it’s really kind of winking at elder millennials. Sometimes characters break the fourth wall with weird dated jokes. Like, for example, we had to abandon our aircraft en route to the island because of a baking disaster and Badtz-Maru shouted, “I”m tired of these cakes on a plane!” before hurling himself out the open door. And Chococat spends a not insubstantial amount of time worrying about “neural networks.” I actually like it better when my Animal Crossing characters go full Matrix and ask me if they’re living in a simulation. (No, Dom, you’re okay. Why don’t you go back to lifting weights and leave the worrying to me.) I’m also a little bit disappointed that all the Sanrio characters’ personalities seem fully locked in. Stardew Valley spoiled me on the character growth front.

Other than that, this one is a real fast-paced blast and I haven’t even come close to feeling like I’ve run up against the edge of the island, the storylines, or the world itself. Now, if you’ll excuse me, My Melody needs me to find her missing strawberry crates and she does not like waiting.

Marxist Barbie Discourse and the Weird Wide Web of Queer Video Essays

There are many ways to mark the times before and after pivotal events. There’s the markers historians use, such as B.C.E. and C.E.; the casual longing use of the “Before Times” to refer to our carefree, pre-Covid existences. And then, there is life after Barbenheimer Weekend, henceforth dividing our evermore chaotic time into another schism: Before Barbie and After Barbie. And after seeing a hotly-anticipated movie like Barbie comes the aftermath, the Olive Gardenesque neverending buffet of cultural response. We feast on the hot takes, stuff ourselves silly on discourse, admire everyone’s premiere night ‘fit pics in the comforting glow of our phones, placing bets on the over-under of how many drag kings will perform to “I’m Just Ken” (The answer? All of them, and I will watch every single number with joy and admiration and tip generously)

So what is there to do now that you’ve seen Barbie twice and read every thinkpiece about it in existence and texted all your friends to tell them that they are beautiful and capable of anything and more than (K)enough? I will be coming down from the pink, Indigo-Girls-tinged haze with my favorite method of exploring any cultural phenomenon — watching as many long, overly elaborate, documentary-style YouTube video essays about the subject as I possibly can. Video essays have been my go-to “background TV” for a while now, kept me company through quarantine and other isolating mental health patches, and what better way to celebrate a communal zeitgeisty moment than by sharing a favorite with you, readers?

With the Barbie hype pervading every corner of TikTok, every drag show theme, even the creeping vines of our subconscious, it only makes sense that I start with the best video essay to recover from Greta Gerwig’s film — Alexander Avila’s “Overanalyzing the Barbie Movies With Queer Marxist Theory.” Although there are many queer readings of the Barbie animated franchise on YouTube, including this one from Drawpinion Dump, but Avila’s video is, I would argue, the definitive Barbieverse deep dive.

Although Avila’s video focuses on queer readings of animated Barbie films, it makes for the perfect prelude to Barbie because he provides some important historical context to the creation of the titular doll and her cultural significance over time, particularly to, as Avila puts it, the kids that made their Barbies kiss, or dressed Barbie in Ken’s clothes and Ken in Barbie’s. The primary focus of these animated movies is homosocial relationships rather than, say, Barbie and Ken, and that emphasis, naturally, is ripe for queer readings (and boy, are there readings).

But this is also a video about queer Marxist theory, and Barbie is a brand in our capitalist hellworld, one that while offering some freedom on an individual level for exploring one’s identity through play, will never really challenge any big structural inequities. Avila uses Barbie as an instructive lens for talking about cultural hegemony (tl;dr maintaining power or domination over people through cultural force) and the appeal and pitfalls of liberal individualism. “You can project queerness onto the narrative and that can be genuinely liberating for some people, but the movie places the audience within the boundaries of a white, feminine and traditionally aristocratic queerness that maintains the hegemony of Barbie’s pink image,” Avila says in the video.

I don’t want to give too much away from the deep dives, especially into the queer yearning of Barbie and the Diamond Castle (let’s play “Barbie Lyric or Mitski Song?”). Come for the queer Barbie memories; stay for the only political theory crash course that refers to Antonio Gramsci as a “socialist twunk.”

There’s something deeply satisfying about a video deep dive, and I’m not the only one who thinks so—when I asked for video essay recommendations once on Lex, I was met with dozens of comments from strangers sharing their favorites, many of them queer. While this isn’t explicitly a queer channel, if you too can recite the “Shapeland” monologue from the Defunctland FastPass documentary, know that I see you and I love you.

As discourse and the general experience of Being Online gets worse and worse with the devolution of Twitter into 4chan for Boomers, the further fish-gutting of independent media, and comment sections continuing to be, well, comment sections, video essays, at least the good ones (and because it is YouTube, there are a lot of hot reactionary garbage ones too), teach us something new and encourage critical thinking. And even if you don’t learn much, I find them to be fun and interesting—it’s the same little brain-scratching buzz I get from enthusiastically sharing something I’m interested in with a friend, or listening to them do the same. Maybe this is the part where I should talk about the occasionally unhealthy parasocial relationships we have with queer Internet personalities, including video essayists, but that could really be a whole entire essay.

So, where to start on your own deep dive journey if you want to start exploring the wide world of queer YouTube video essays? There are the legions of Tumblr and fandom historians, offering exhaustive explorations of fandom and shipping moments that will give you flashbacks to mid-2010s SuperWhoLock Tumblr, but in a way that I promise is still interesting even if you have not watched even a second of Super, Who or Lock, and unpacking the legacy of subcultures exploring queer and trans identities on the platform.

There are the queer and trans pop cultural historians, covering everything from gay Muppeteering icon Richard Hunt to the story of Serena Olvido, the first trans actress in a Disney animated film, who played Ursula in the Spanish dub of The Little Mermaid; from the history of queerbaiting in film, to pop culture depictions of bisexuality in the early aughts, to drawing parallels between Anita Bryant and J.K. Rowling. Princess Weekes’s recent YouTube “version of a You’re Wrong About episode” on Anne Heche and what happens when we as a community fail one another, released just a couple of weeks ago, is essential viewing. And, if you are looking for something a little lower-stakes, there’s of course more contemporary pop culture commentary — Tee Noir’s hour-long breakdown of our long national nightmare that was The Ultimatum: Queer Love may be the most entertaining examination of that mess on the internet.

This is by no means exhaustive, and I could say more about a ton of other creators and I probably forgot to mention your favorite and I’m very, very sorry. But I hope these recommendations find you well, stoke your curiosity or encourage you to explore and examine something you’re interested in on your own terms.

Also, it goes without saying but since so many of the queer video essays I love the most have to do with film and television, support the writers & actors striking right now. Solidarity 5ever.

The 10 Gayest Video Game Moments I Found When Cleaning My Nintendo Switch and PS5

Recently, in the family group chat, someone said a thing I hear all the time: Heather, you want everything to be gay. That’s ridiculous. I don’t want everything to be gay. Everything is gay. Of course, straight people often simply cannot see this fact due to spending their lives trapped in a hamster ball of heteronormativity where the men of Shondaland are good catches. I swear to you if I ever saw President Fitz in a dark alley, I would beat the absolute hell out of him. Or, at least I’d want to do that. I’d totally do it if life were a video game — which brings me to the whole point of this post. I was cleaning off my PS5 and Nintendo Switch this week because I was running out of space, and decided to share with you my ten gayest games/screenshots I found. Because you understand that this world is just queer as can be.

Stardew Valley

I used my shed to build a Dungeons & Dragons battle-room to impress a girl.

But I was also crushing on a whole other girl who threw us a rainbow dance party in her bedroom, where she also rescues and rehabilitates injured animals.

But then I found an EVEN GAYER thing hidden on my island.

Animal Crossing

I made a bunch of WNBA and University of Tennessee Lady Vols basketball gear and put it in my Able Sisters clothing shop, and then my villagers all started buying it and wearing it around.

Which was nice because our basketball court is the center of our entire island.

Also I opened a clothing store called Butchies where we sell bowties and beanies and endless sweater vests.

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

This girl I flirted with three times in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey gave me the choice of being with her or killing her! ETERNAL LOVE OR DEATH. Lesbians, dude.

Anyway, yeah, I kissed her.

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

You never met a butchy witch like Eivor. When she’s robbing churches, with that haircut and face tattoo, she’s just a-hollerin’ “TAKE CHRIST’S SILVER!!!!”

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores

There’s literally one person on the entire planet who can save humanity, and it’s Aloy, but she’s still got time to take a walk down to the beach and smooch a bossy girl she caught feelings for.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet

Mr. Saguaro, Home Ec Daddy and Dendra, goth Mommi Battle teacher.

Pokemon Sword and Shield

Four-star butch in a tie and vest.

Super Mario World

Princess Peach was my very first childhood crush, and I still spend many hours every year rescuing her, because I’ll never stop loving her.

New Pokemon Snap

Platonic cuddling.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

I’ve met a lot of homosexuals in my life, but none quite as gay as Link and Sidon. The Zelda writers even gave Sidon a lady fiancee, but she spends the whole game giving April Ludgate: “This is my boyfriend Derek, and this is Derek’s boyfriend Ben. Derek is gay, but he’s straight for me, but he’s gay for Ben, and Ben’s really gay for Derek. And I hate Ben.”

“Critical Role” Campaign 3 is Gayer Than Ever

This review contains EXTREMELY GAY SPOILERS for Campaign 3 of Critical Role, proceed with caution.

Critical Role is no stranger to giving us that good, gay content, especially after Campaign 2 gifted us the magic of Beau and Yasha, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t beyond thrilled that Campaign 3 has already gifted us with a queer lady duo between two of the main player characters. Once we stopped screaming/sending each other fan art/running in gay circles about it, Nic and I (Valerie Anne) sat down to discuss the queer goings-on of the Bell’s Hells campaign. Specifically and especially Campaign 3, Episode 65 aka the one where Imogen and Laudna finally (finally!) kissed.

Nic: From the moment Campaign 3 started with Marisha and Laura alone at the table, Marisha embodying Laudna’s fun spookiness and Laura taking on Imogen’s sweet but anxious energy, I knew I was doomed. Best friends originally united through their trauma, both separate and shared, learning through each other that they’re worthy of love despite the entire world telling them otherwise?! It’s what shipping dreams are made of!!

Valerie: I have been waiting for this moment since I first started watching Critical Role. Almost immediately in Campaign 1, I started shipping Keyleth and Vex. I had no hopes of it becoming canon but I was okay with that anyway. Perhaps because of those residual Vexleth feelings, maybe because Tough Lady With A Secret Gooey Center + Bubbly Goofball With Secret Trauma is one of my favorite combinations, but I spent a good part of Campaign 2 shipping Beau and Jester, too. So when Laura and Marisha showed up in Campaign 3 with Laudna and Imogen already acting so relationshippy that it took me a few episodes to realize they thought they were just friends, it was too late, I was already a goner.

Nic: Oh I am right there with you on that favorite ‘ship combination. You asked me how I felt about Imodna becoming canon and I mean, I still can’t think about it without my Apple Watch telling me to slow my heart rate, so… But in all seriousness, I love a slow burn, not agonizingly slow, but slow enough where you get antsy every time those two characters are alone together or interacting because of the KISS KISS KISS potential. With Imogen and Laudna, we’ve gotten to see them together from episode 1, so as their relationship developed so did my crackshipping.

We’ve learned a bit about how they found each other, about Laudna growing up in Whitestone and becoming Vex’s proxy at the Sun Tree (there’s something so satisfying and hilarious about Laura romancing her prior PC’s doppelgänger), about Imogen’s history with the moon Ruidus and how it affected her relationship with her father after her mother left; we learned about so many things that led each of these women to believe they were broken and unworthy. Laudna’s mind has been overtaken by the spirit (??) of Delilah Briarwood and she worries how much of her is even her anymore. These two have been THROUGH it, but they’ve always been able to lean on each other when they start to lose themselves. They see each other in ways no one else does, so for me it felt like a matter of when, not if. But dammit I sure did not expect it to be as early as 65 episodes in!! So I’ll ask you, friend, how are you feeling about it??

Valerie: The way they look at each other, the way they’re always top of mind for each other. I wanted it so badly but I genuinely didn’t think it would happen. I clung onto hope that maybe someday, but I was buckled in and ready for a long, angsty ride. And one could argue that 65 four-hour-long episodes into a campaign IS a long time, but I was prepared for longer. We watched Beau making her way (pause for echo) through random women and moving past her crush on Jester into her feelings for Yasha until they finally got together for longer. And since both Marisha and Laura were both part of such monumental player character ships in the first two campaigns, I thought maybe Imogen and Laudna’s “best friendship” was their attempt to armor themselves against that.

And maybe that was the original plan, because this kiss did seem to take Marisha by surprise. But I think the separation made them both think about each other in a slightly different way. It’s one thing to play your character with an underlying motivation of protecting another character when they’re always by your side. When you’re forcibly separated, and you start to realize that getting back to her is your driving motivation, when you’re willing to risk psychic damage just to try to tell if she’s okay, when you feel yourself falling apart at the seams without her…I can see how both of them started to realize that this relationship was more important to them than they even realized.

Nic: Oof, I almost forgot about the literal psychic damage that Imogen took. I also think Imogen realized her feelings for Laudna were more romantic than friendship before Laudna did; it was always going to be her to make the first move. We saw it in her jealousy, we saw it in her care and attention to Laudna during combat, we heard it in the shaking of her voice when she thought Laudna lied to her. Not that Laudna didn’t have feelings! I mean, she literally said the words, “I DEEPLY love Imogen”, I just think she leaned a bit more heavily on “in a friend way” than Imogen did. Denial is powerful, lemme tell ya!

When I say “all witches are gay” I do also mean warlocks and sorcerers.

Something that struck me is the effect of the circlet on Imogen and Laudna’s communication. Imogen has always been able to read Laudna’s thoughts until now, and while she’s relieved to be without the constant din of voices in her head, she agonizingly said multiple times that she couldn’t hear Laudna anymore. You could tell how distraught she was to not know what Laudna was thinking or feeling, so Laudna told her to just ask. So when Imogen immediately asks Laudna if she can kiss her because she can’t tell if it’s alright anymore, after I stopped screaming, I realized that means that at some point Imogen heard Laudna express feelings of wanting to kiss Imogen in her head, and didn’t want to assume those feelings were still there.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME, LAURA BAFTA BAILEY?! And honestly, I don’t even know if Laudna was aware of those thoughts on some level. In fact, there was a moment after they kissed when Laudna started to talk about how much she cared about Imogen, and to me it was giving Sam Smith “Not in That Way” vibes, and it looked like Imogen thought the same thing I did, until we both gave a sigh of relief when Laudna said “I kiss her again.”

Valerie: Maybe it was reuniting that made them realize they wanted to be as together as possible. Maybe it was seeing them return with new bonds to new people. Laudna hearing about a threesome and thinking for a heartbeat Imogen might have been involved (something Imogen was VERY quick to clarify she wasn’t part of). Imogen seeing Laudna hug a beautiful, plucky wizard and maybe realizing that the tightness in her chest, the pang of jealousy, was just a little more than your normal friendship feelings.

It’s how I first realized I was definitely queer when I was 13. It was a question that had been bobbing around in my brain for a few years, but it hit with with terrifying clarity one night on our class trip to Washington DC when I was looking for my best friend at a party and someone pointed to where she was and when I looked she was slow dancing with some boy from another school. The jolt I felt, how hot my face got, I knew in that moment it wasn’t logical, it wasn’t just “my best friend ditched me” feelings, it was “oh I think I want to be the one dancing with her” feelings. So maybe that’s what happened to Imogen. Maybe Laudna never even considered it until Imogen asked, but I agree with you — something about the way Imogen said “I can’t tell if it’s alright anymore” makes me think they’ve both at least wondered about it before.

Nic: We got our romcom moment and I will never stop being emotional about “can I kiss you?”.

Marisha: *makes an undead unromanceable PC*
Laura as Imogen: #CriticalRole #CriticalRoleSpoilers #imodna pic.twitter.com/BwBt8Ql4R0

— Nic 🍉 (@njnic23) July 14, 2023

Valerie: Gods, look at Laura’s body language. The question spills out of her like it’s been pressing against the door for weeks desperate to get out. Just when I thought the Fearne/Deanna/Chet threesome (and subsequent Fearne/Deanna flirting) was going to be the queerest it got for the ladies for a hot minute! (No disrespect to the gender fluid robot twosome of FCG and Frida. They’re also very cute, it just happened a lot faster and didn’t wrap its fist around my heart like Laudna and Imogen have.)

Laura and Marisha have been playing these two perfectly. Even if they didn’t know this was where the relationship was going, it doesn’t matter, it was a natural progression nonetheless. The way they always move to each other, think of each other. When they fought on the airship about the rock, I felt my own heart breaking about it. It was so real and tense and the kind of deeply emotional, quiet fighting only best friends can do.

Nic: One of my favorite things about watching Laura and Marisha is how they both physically become the character they’re playing. You can quite literally see the moments when they shift from Laura and Marisha to Imogen and Laudna. In the previous episode, the rest of Bell’s Hells were recounting their sexual exploits from their side adventure and IMMEDIATELY without a second thought, Laura/Imogen looks at Marisha/Laudna and reassures her with the “not me though.” And earlier in the campaign when Erika Ishii’s guest character, Yu, tried to ask Laudna out on a date, Laura Bailey became the physical embodiment of the moment you described with your 13 year old self realizing she wanted to be the one dancing with your best friend. Her body tensed and though her words said there’s nothing romantic between her and Laudna, her face said, “fuck, I’m in love.”

Valerie: The face acting on those two, I swear. I can’t take my eyes off of them when they’re in a scene, even if they’re not talking.

Everyone else literally recoils when they see Laudna, they see someone odd, someone different. But not Imogen. Imogen sees a loyal and powerful friend. Imogen sees someone who is strong enough to fight back her literal and metaphorical demons to still be bright and smiley most of the time. Imogen sees spooky beautiful. And you touched on this already but the same goes the other way around. Imogen was essentially cast out of her home (and away from her horses!!) because she was different, too weird, too dangerous. But Laudna just sees a woman who is so in tune with other people’s emotions it hurts her, someone who didn’t ask for the cards she’s been dealt but has been using her powers for good. Someone who would go to hell and back for her. Like they said on the show, they’re each other’s anchors, and they make each other better. Their broken pieces fit together and make them stronger for it.

Nic: Great point! Quick, what’s your favorite non-kiss Imodna moment so far in the campaign?

Valerie: Ma’am? You want me to pick ONE moment?? These beautiful idiots have been my phone background for MONTHS NOW. You’ve said before but I’ll say it again, watching Laura Bailey and Marisha Ray act together, when they lock onto each other and Do A Scene, it’s impossible for me to tear my eyes away. I hold my breath, my heart beats faster. They do truly magnificent work. Like their fight about the broken rock gave me knots in my stomach but it was so beautiful to watch them, it felt so real. And as someone who has had to play-fight with friends during intense D&D sessions I know it can be hard to lose yourself in the character during moments like those but they do it so beautifully.

I know it’s kind of fucked up but one of my favorite moments was when Imogen went full Scarlet Witch on Otohan when they targeted Laudna because she was Imogen’s favorite. Of course, I say that in retrospect, now that I know Laudna is fine. I genuinely almost quit the campaign when I thought Laudna was gone-gone. The combination of being hurt by this character I had already grown attached to leaving and Imogen being without her other half was going to be too much. But instead it just led to delicious angst that has already paid off. What about you?

Nic: Yes! Scarlet!Imogen was one of my favorite things to watch. I’ll add two tiny moments that stick out in my mind. This might be cheating, but almost right before they had their fantasy supermarket makeout, Laudna asks Imogen where she’s going as the group splits to run errands and Imogen immediately says, “Wherever you’re going.” Because the thought of being away from Laudna again, no matter how short the amount of time, is too much for her to bear.

To piggyback off of what you said about the rock fight, this might be more Laura/Marisha than Imogen/Laudna, but when they finally got one-on-one time to talk about it, their relieved “Hi” in unison was so relatable to me. I think most of us know the feeling of friendship vibes being off and the anxiety of when the next conversation will be, so the fact that they were so in sync is just another example of, like you said, them locking onto each other.

I’m so curious to see how they play this going forward.

Just three gals playing three queer ladies. (In fact, it’s possible this entire party is somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum? The only unconfirmed is Chet but he’s mentioned men being attractive enough for me to consider him at least a Kinsey 2.)

Nic: How do you think the rest of Bell’s Hells will react to Imodna canon?

Valerie: I have been wondering if/when they’ll tell the others or kiss in front of them. I mean the metagaming pigeon (and/or Pâté) will help I’m sure but the two of them could be holding hands while they walked or sharing rooms and the rest of the crew wouldn’t necessarily know anything has changed. Though I’m sure Sam won’t let it be long before he gets it out of one of them. I think they’ll be happy for them. I would guess Chet and Fearne would be like “wait were you two not already dating?” or something. Or maybe Fearne will be as absolutely hype as Ashley was when it happened. (I highly recommend going back and watching that scene again but watching everyone else besides Marisha and Laura’s reactions. It’s great.) What are your hopes and dreams for Imogen and Laudna as more-than-friends?

Nic: There are so many possibilities!! My dearest hope for them is that they get to be happy together for longer than a few episodes. Or at least, as happy as two people can be when they probably need to journey to the moon to maybe save the gods and face off with a hundreds year old powerful wizard and also Imogen’s mom?!

Valerie: I agree. And I mean what queer relationship DOESN’T involve the moon, religion and/or mommy issues.

I Accidentally Turned “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” Into a Lesbian Cat Rescue Sim

I really loved The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but there were way too many nooks and crannies between the puzzles for me to actually fully complete it. I played it twice, including all the DLCs, but never got close to 100%-ing. Tears of the Kingdom, though? This game’s got me exploring every single inch of Hyrule, especially collecting all the fifty-eleven pieces of armor hidden throughout the kingdom (and above it in Ancient Hyrule Sky Heaven, and below it in Ancient Hyrule Hades). That includes the Bokoblin Mask, which I never got in the first game, so I had no idea what it did besides look horrifyingly adorable. Imagine my surprise when I was traipsing around wearing it recently and accidentally became best friends with a bunch of monsters!

It was a beautiful, sunny morning in Hyrule Field and Link was out and about searching for herbs and fruits and mushrooms. Just your average daybreak elfin foraging. He was wearing the Bokoblin Mask because he was feeling a little bit silly, a little bit giddy. He’d received a vow of eternal commitment from his husband Sidon just the day before, his backpack was full of enough supplies to make a hundred hovercraft, the kids in Lurelin Village had given him a cute little lobster shirt for driving the pirates away, and he’d just helped the people of Hateno Village rediscover cheese. Yes, despite the absence, once again, of Princess Zelda, things were looking pretty good for a guy who kept waking up from a coma to discover the world ending in a whole new way.

Link wasn’t really looking where he was going, which is why he ran directly into a Bokoblin who was patrolling some ruins, a backpack full of fire fruit propped on his shoulders. Link reached for his sword, but stopped when the Bokoblin didn’t reach for his rock club. Instead, the Bokoblin did a little exclamation over his head and started snorfling Link with his piggy pink nose. The Bokoblin turned his noggin this way, then that way — and began talking to Link! Snorting and stomping and laughing and waving his arms around. It was the Bokoblin Mask! He thought Link was an actual Bokoblin! And so, following the instincts I’ve developed from years of caring for feral cats in New York City, I had Link slowly reach into his pocket and pull out some food and offer it to his new pal. The real Bokoblin went absolutely nuts for Link’s apples! He ate them all, called over a friend, and together they begged for more. So I tried wildberries. The Bokoblins went nuts for those too! They ate endura carrots. They ate mighty bananas. They even ate some eggs Link had boiled in a hot spring near Death Mountain.

When Link tried to gently exit this serendipitous meeting, his heart grew even fuller than it had been earlier in the morning: the Bokoblins followed him! I recognized this behavior from my feral cat caretaking too. Link had become the Bokoblins’ mother! Link tried his luck with a Boss Bokoblin and his little queue of grumpy followers. Same thing: They ate every snack he offered and then wanted to come home with him. Soon, word spread throughout the entire kingdom, and everywhere Link walked, he walked among monster friends. They told him jokes and laughed and laughed, sometimes toppling over from the force of their own beastly hilarity. They offered him a place to sleep by their fires. The Bokoblins even shared their food with Link, steaks on steaks on steaks.

Since that day, Link and I have never fought another Bokoblin. However, we learned the hard way that Lynels aren’t so easily fooled. We raced to an underground colosseum when we received the Lynel Mask, and at first it seemed like the game’s toughest enemy was also going to become one of our ugly-beautiful sons. And so, we took out our camera to snap a photo, and just as we were lining up the shot, a cobble crusher came smashing down on top of our head, over and over and over. CRUSH! CRUSH! CRUSH! And then it was raining arrows and the Lynel was breathing fire directly into our face. It turns out even lesbians can’t socialize all feral beasts. But that’s okay, our hands are pretty full with all our Boko-brothers and the endless parade of Koroks who have lost their friends.

Pokémon Sleep Is for the Gays

Amazing news, nerds: Two crucial aspects of queer culture are colliding to make your life better and more fun! We all know, of course, that insomnia is queer culture. For real! Statistically, this is true! Gay youths are more than twice as likely to have sleep issues than their straight peers, and that’s before they even learn about property tax and entry-level jobs that require a decade of experience. (This is also anecdotally true; every gay friend I have — so, every friend I have — cannot sleep.) Another staid fixture of queer culture is Pokémon! Did those pocket monsters make us gay, or were we drawn to them because we’re gay and they’re gay? Who’s to say! We caught them and we also caught being queer!

Anyway, the point is that a whole new game is coming to your phone and it’s called Pokémon Sleep, which makes me know it was made for me and you.

The game starts every single Monday when it gifts you a new Snorlax. Your goal is to grow it as big as possible by SLEEPING! Because Pokémon Sleep is also a sleep tracker that you put beside your bed (but not under your head) while you snooze (up to twice a day). While you’re asleep, other Pokémon will join you for a nap, and if you earn enough sleep treats, you can feed them and make them yours. Different Pokémon have different sleep patterns, and enjoy different foods that can be created from a variety of recipes you unlock (by: sleeping!) along the way. The more you rest, the more you win, including a SNORLAX SLEEPING CAP!

Each week, you start over with a new Snorlax who’ll help you fill out your restful Pokedex. Oh, and if you really, really cannot snooze, you can also check in during the day and feed your Snorlax. Plus, unlike the Tamagotchis of our youth, Snorlax will always be okay! See for yourself!

I heard one secret is that Pikachu can chat you into slumber, and I can’t wait to find out if that’s true!

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Is Perfect, Full of Queer Vibes

This The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom review contains mild spoilers.

On Saturday morning, my dear friend Meg Jones Wall texted me to ask how far along I was in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I wasn’t too far, to be honest; these games take me forever to play because I love them but am also terrible at puzzles, especially ones requiring spatial awareness and the ability to reorient objects in your mind. So I asked Meg to tell me something awesome, which I knew meant they’d tell me something gay, and they did: “Sidon is back!” they texted. “There is KNEELING and a VOW.” And so I hardly put the game down for the rest of the weekend.

One of my favorite things about Breath of the Wild was watching so many queer and trans friends imprint onto Link. Trans guys and trans gals, nonbinary gamers, butch lesbians, and on and on. I think it’s because of Link’s general androgyny and also the fact that Link never says a single word, but also there’s just a vibe. One of those if you know, you know ones about Link. That elf just feels queer. Our own Niko Stratis has written about how Link held a mirror up to her life as a trans woman. I also loved this piece at Gizmodo called “A Link Between Genders” about The Legend of Zelda’s trans joy. And I’m happy to say that the vibe is back and queerer than ever in Tears of the Kingdom.

It’s hard to write an actual review of this game because the only thing to compare it to is the massively successful Breath of the Wild, but it surpasses even that masterpiece, going places no video game has gone before. So here are just a few of the things I love:

Link’s new powers. In Breath of the Wild, there was a very clear way the game wanted you to solve all its puzzles and riddles, but Tears of the Kingdom almost invites you to break it to try out new and creative ways to make things happen. Pick stuff up, stick it together, teleport through it, set it on fire, tear it down, build a bridge, merge your weapons. I have, more than once, been so overwhelmed with options that I just stopped and picked apples for a while! All these options make the giant world map even more exciting because there’s infinite ways to traverse it. I even saw a critic say that playing this game has cured them of their to-do list obsession; they’re just free.

The quality of life improvements, especially cooking and inventory management, make gameplay much more seamless.

The story starts off like always: Link naked and unarmed! After a little subzero Hyrule Castle explanation with Zelda, Link gets blasted by a new big bad and wakes up in the sky (kind of). When he finds his way back to Hyrule, there’s been an Upeaval, so he’s got to solve that while also finding Zelda who’s gone missing (surprise!). It’s kinda spooky, the apparitions of Zelda that Link runs into, but it’s hard to get too emotional about it, because Link unlocks even more cool gear and abilities when he’s back in Hyrule.

Link and Sidon basically getting married.

I’ve only put in about 20 hours, and I honestly feel like I’ll get 100 out of it before it’s all said and done! How are you feeling about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom?

Also.Also.Also: Hear Me Out, What if Stardew Valley but Also With a Serial Killer Whodunit?

Janelle Monáe has still fully broken my brain, so we’re going to do tonight’s news roundup quick and dirty.

Saw This, Thought of You

This Cozy Farm Sim Is ‘Akin to Stardew Valley’ Except You Never Know Which of the Locals Is Secretly a Serial Killer. Grave Seasons is currently in development by indie studio Perfect Garbage and listen — I have never played Stardew a day in my life, I don’t even really go here, so I fully respect if you take my excitement here with a grain of salt. However. HOWEVERRR. The headline of this article alone made me rethink all of my “video games are not for me” life choices. I mean who wouldn’t want to play this!?!? Stardew Valley + meets the plot of Bodies Bodies Bodies! Did you hear me? Starwdew Valley, but playing Assassin!!!!! WHO WOULDNT WANT THAT!

I thought I liked this story by @conniewang — but when I started crying at the part where all the Connies meet their namesake Connie Chung at the story’s photo shoot, I realized I LOVED it 😭 THE PHOTOGRAPHER WAS ALSO NAMED CONNIE!!! I’M SCREAMING https://t.co/L68uEK4DHD

— Caity Weaver (@caityweaver) May 11, 2023

I just loved this so, so much (it’s also an outstanding scrolling experience). Why Are There So Many Asian American Women Named Connie?

Immigration Cost Me My Inner Child

I have legit have not stopped thinking about this in two days. MLK’s Famous Criticism of Malcolm X Was a ‘Fraud,’ Author Finds

Latine Teen Shows Keep Getting Canceled & It’s Hurting Young People. Thanks, I hate it!

I clicked this with one hand while the other covered my eyes because I spent an ungodly amount of money on Beyoncé tickets and I will not have it spoiled. That’s true service journalism: A Guide to Watching the ‘Renaissance’ Tour From Your Couch

Queer as in F*ck You

F.D.A. Ends Ban on Blood Donations From Gay and Bisexual Men

Elliot Page Recalls Past Feelings of Dysphoria and ‘Joy’ He Now Feels in His Body. Get ready for Elliot’s memoir Pageboy, it comes out next month!

Transgender Youths Sue Over Montana Gender-Affirming Care Ban. Definitely makes me want to also bring this back: Lawmaker Zooey Zephyr Proposes to Girlfriend at Queer Prom, Calls It “A Love That Feels Like Home” 🥲

Political Snacks

George Santos Surrenders to Federal Law Enforcement to Face Fraud, Money Laundering and Additional Charges

Daniel Penny Is Reportedly Expected to Be Charged in Jordan Neely’s Killing and Surrender as Early as Friday

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores Is a Queer Gamer’s Dream Come True

Absolutely massive spoilers below for Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores. 

Guerrilla Games dropped the — first? only? — DLC for Horizon Forbidden West yesterday. It’s name, Burning Shores, references the new world Aloy travels to in her pursuit of information to help her beat Nemesis, the AI that’s pissed as hell at the Far Zeniths from the Old World, and heading to earth to destroy it all over again. Burning Shores is Los Angeles, sunken, earthquaked, volcanoed, and on fire. It’s also home to a faction of the Quen expedition that got separated from the rest of the tribe Aloy met in the main game. Among them is Seyka, a marine with a penchant for breaking rules and bossing people around. From the second Aloy meets her, when her Sunwing gets shot out of the sky and she crashes onto the beach at Seyka’s feet, she is smitten. Yes, that’s right, my gay gaming friends: Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores confirms, finally and fully, that Aloy is as queer as her genetic mother, Dr. Elisabet Sobeck.

The Burning Shores map is a full third of the size of the original game map, but I confess I haven’t yet ventured outside the main storyline. It was seriously so clear, immediately, that Aloy was going to catch feelings for Seyka that I didn’t even pause to upgrade my cool new weapon or try on my new armor. Like Aloy, I just followed Seyka everywhere she told me to go. Which was a new thing, for both me and Aloy; I’m usually the kind of gamer who spends endless hours picking daisies on the hillside while the main NPCs yell at me that the world is ending and I’m the only one who can save it.

It’s Seyka’s bossiness that first gets Aloy’s attention. Aloy is the one who usually tromps into town demanding to know what the heck is going on and who’s in charge, so she can then completely dismiss whatever demands people make to carry out her own missions. Aloy cocks her eyebrow, baffled by Seyka’s confidence and competence with a bow (and a Ropecaster, which is still nerfed beyond use in the DLC), and also baffled by her response to Seyka’s whole beautiful deal. They climb around inside ruins while they flirt (“Someone likes my Pullcaster!”). They travel together by boat and Sunwing and a whole new swimming Sunwing called the Waterwing (“It’s a snug fit,” Seyka says climbing up behind Aloy and wrapping her arms around her waist. “We’ll manage,” Aloy grins, before launching into the sky.) And they slowly open up to each other about their lives and their struggles, building a tentative trust, and promising to help each other win their battles. When Seyka gets mad at Aloy, she kind of comes unglued. She can’t understand why she’s so bothered that Seyka’s mad! Erend stays mad at her, and it’s never gotten under her skin like this! Not ever!

In every cutscene, Aloy and Seyka’s relationship deepens. They’re sweet and awkward and nervous. Aloy wasn’t even this nervous fighting a Deathbringer! She regularly leaps off of buildings and cliffs with nothing but a rope in her hand and a busted piece of shield tech in her pocket! Her favorite thing is blowing holes into the walls and ceilings of centuries-old crumbling buildings! She’s never been scared like this! Even the music, when Aloy and Seyka are fighting together, is romantic. (Except the Slaughterspine fight music, which is still punk as heck.)

In the end, you can choose whether or not to kiss Seyka right on the mouth — but even if you don’t, there’s no getting around the narratively concrete fact that Aloy has real, romantic feelings for her. Even choosing the most intellectual response to Seyka’s feelings confession gives an answer about how Aloy’s reciprocates, but the timing is wrong. (The world, after all, is still in mortal peril.)

It’s almost impossible to overstate what a big deal this development is. Sure, big studio games have been getting better and better about including queer romance options over the years, but there are still very few games where you both play as a woman protagonist and are verifiably, canonically, no-way-around-it queer. For this to be happening in a game as important — to the gaming community and to the PlayStation5’s success — as Horizon? That’s huge! It’s also rad as as everything that Aloy is voiced by queer actress Ashly Burch. And from a narrative perspective, Burning Shores shows Aloy taking the kind of chance on love that her genetic mother never could.

For Elisabet Sobeck, saving the world was more important than any kind of relationship, romantic or otherwise. Aloy has the exact same weight on her shoulders, and now she’s learned that the people you love are what makes the world worth saving.

8 Queer Nerd Hobbies and How to Get Into Them

There’s never been a better time to embrace all the nerdery that lives in your heart, especially if you’re a sapphic nerd! Our time has truly come! Unfortunately, lots of geeky activities can feel overwhelming or inaccessible if you’re just starting out. I know because I’ve felt it, and because it’s the number one thing people ask me: “How do I get into comics/D&D/video games? I don’t know where to start!” So I thought, here near the beginning of the year, what about a primer for some of the most popular queer nerd hobbies? The beauty of most gay geeks — unlike most cis straight boy geeks — is that we WANT everyone to love what we love, and are more than happy to hold your hand and wax poetic about it, while guiding you into the depths of obsession! In fact, I bet if you have any questions about any nerds hobbies, and you ask them in these very comments, someone will swoop in and be thrilled to answer you! Here are eight queer nerd hobbies, and how to get into them!

1. Sci-Fi Series With a Billion Episodes

The most important thing you need to know about ALL nerdy stories — fantasy TV, sci-fi movies, comic books, video games, graphic novels — is that every single timeline is wibbly wobbly. Fantasy’s cousin is soap operas. (Star Wars is literally called a space opera.) It’s just that all the shenanigans and tomfoolery are explained by magic or cool tech! And the hijinks, they are endless! So endless, in fact, that there’s no solid continuity in any of these stories, no matter how much hand-waving super-fans do.

That means you absolutely do not have to start in the 1960s if you want to watch Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Who, or watch all 178 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation if you think Star Trek: Picard looks cool and gay, or sit through a single second of Jar Jar Binks if you want to check the hype on Baby Yoda in The Mandalorian. And anyone who tells otherwise is wrong! If you like Willow the TV show, and you want to go back and watch Willow the 80s movie, awesome! Enjoy the special effects! Will it give you a deeper understanding of the series? Sure, and some inside jokes too. But the show is still imminently enjoyable — and understandable! — without all that background. That’s true of every fantasy series I can think of. Plus, if you have a question about the older stuff, I guarantee you can find it on a fan wiki.

2. Cartoons

The tricky thing about getting into cartoons is really just the online dialogue. If you’ve been into cartoons for a while, and I say “The Owl House” to you, you’ll be able to draw a line to She-Ra then Steven Universe then Adventure Time then The Legend of Korra. But you don’t NEED to be able to do that. You can just enjoy animated TV. I personally think those series I just named have done queer rep as good as any live-action show for “grown-ups” in the last decade. And the great news is that ALL the best cartoons are streaming (for now). It can seem overwhelming, I know. There’s a billion episodes of Adventure Time, for example. And the old ones are on Cartoon Network while the new ones are on HBO Max. But just click on a pilot, give it a few episodes, and take it from there. If you want more adult cartoons (by which I mean both sexier and adult characters), try Harley Quinn or Star Trek: Lower Decks. You don’t need to know a dang thing about Batman or Star Trek to enjoy them.

3. Watching D&D

There are so many cool D&D campaigns you can watch and stream these days! Which might not sound like fun to you, but probably because you haven’t tried it. I thought my friends were having some kind of collective hallucination of joy when they all started watching Critical Role five hours a week, several years ago, and then I started, and now I’m as hooked as they are. (You should read Valerie Anne’s essay on how queer D&D changed her life, if you haven’t already.)

Critical Role is the most famous D&D game in the world, and there’s plenty of queer characters to root for. High Rollers is a UK-based campaign. Dimension 20 has gotten more and more popular over the last few years. The Black Dice Society is super beloved. Rivals of Winterdeep is a hidden gem. You can also, of course, watch the Critical Role animated series, The Legend of Vox Machina. I’d recommend starting with a one-shot or mini-series, to get a feel for the players and their style, and if you like that, there’s a whole world of imagination waiting for you!

4. Playing D&D

I didn’t start playing D&D until I was 40! I literally had no idea to play when A.E. Osworth invited me over to do a one-shot with some queer friends a few years ago. I was nervous! I didn’t even own any dice; I had to run out and buy some the day of the game! But that game was one of the best nights of my life, and it lead to a campaign with dear friends. We had to halt it when the pandemic started, and it’s, by far, the thing I’ve had the hardest time letting go of because of Covid. I’m not good at D&D, really, but it is so much fun!

Like most things, you can go as deep as you want with D&D, reading all the guidebooks and learning all the magic systems and spells and lore — or! You can get your friends to help you build a character and learn as you go, just enjoying making up stories with people you love, and sometimes landing the fatal blow on a demilich. The best way I can think of to get involved with a D&D group is to hang out in queer spaces where people play D&D — like Autostraddle! — and make friends. Every time we do an A+ Discord event, new tabletop game groups pop up! People are always looking for groups in our comments! Luckily, there’s loads of ways to play online these days, so you can build a group from all over the world.

5. Comic Books

I think the reason comic books are so intimidating is because the characters are constantly changing. Not just the costumes, but the person inside them, and even if their name stays the same, they could be a whole different character. Most major superheroes — even Batman — have been through a zillion changes over the years. It’s not always Bruce Wayne inside there! And then there’s the added complication of what’s on TV, or what’s in a movie, those might not be the same as what’s in the comic book. And then, at any given time, there might be seven comic book titles about one character all taking place in different worlds on different timelines. Again, the key to your happiness is knowing you don’t have to start at “the beginning” and you don’t have to be a completionist.

My advice is to pick a character you love and then read a current series about that character. Almost all major comic books are collected into trade paperbacks. That means you can buy like ten comic books all bundled together in one book, so you’re not chasing individual issues around. Also, Comixology makes it super easy to get your hands on any single issue you’re looking for, if you don’t mind reading digitally. Once you decide if you like a certain book — the character, the writing, the art — then you can figure out if you want to read more books about that hero. Or more books by that artist, or writer. You can dig down as far as you want to go, and it will get easier and easier as you go along. Also don’t forget to explore indie titles like Carly Usdin’s beloved series, The Avant-Guards or Heavy Vinyl, or the all-time queer fave Lumberjanes.

6. The Sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe

Autostraddle EIC Carmen Phillips is going to fall over when she reads this, but: You do not have to watch all the Marvel movies and all the Marvel TV shows to enjoy Marvel characters! The tricky thing about Marvel movies is the order they were made in is not the order of the MCU’s timeline. The first MCU movie was Iron Man, released in 2008, but the first MCU movie in terms of the Marvel timeline is Captain America: The First Avenger, which takes place in 1941 and was made in 2011. The next spot on the timeline is Captain Marvel, which takes place in the 1990s, but was made in 2019, and is the 22nd Marvel movie. So! I understand your confusion!

You can simply choose a character you like and watch through their movies, and that’s just fine! Captain Marvel is a great choice. Black Panther is another great choice. I have a soft spot for Thor, himbo long-haired soft butch that he is. Plus you’re getting Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie in those movies.

If you want to watch Marvel movies in the order they were made, or the order of the timeline, Rotten Tomatoes has you covered. I will say that I watched all the Marvel movies as they came out, because I have always loved superheroes, but a few years ago, my wife and I rewatched them all in timeline order. Both were very fun. It’s a good way to spend TV time with someone you love, without any of the labor of trying to figure out what’s next.

Note: The Spider-Man movies fit into the MCU in a very weird way that I will explain in the comments if you want. The main thing to know is that the Tom Holland/Zendaya Spider-Mans are the ones that are important in this world. He’s the Spider-Man of our known Avengers..

7. Fantasy Books

I think fantasy books can seem intimidating because so many of them are trilogies and so many of them are thousands of pages long. I think they can also seem dull if the only fantasy books you know about are Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. But oh, there are SO many LGBTQ fantasy books these days, and they are absolutely not all taking place in Middle Earth.

N.K. Jemisin, the most celebrated modern fantasy author, is a Black woman who refuses to write in this white supremacist middle-ages fantasy land we’ve been inundated with our whole lives. All of her books are a revelation, and unlike anything you’ve ever read. The Broken Earth trilogy won THREE Hugo Awards. Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne is queer and inspired by Hindu epics. Last year’s widely beloved The Daughter of the Moon Goddess, by Sue Lynn Tan, is inspired by Chinese legend. Sangu Mandanna’s The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, another breakout hit from last year, is modern fantasy with four witches of color as protagonists; the main character is an Indian witch living in Britain. Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes is a lesbian rom-com set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. Samatha Shannon’s The Prioriy of the Orange Tree, my favorite book, has an epic lesbian romance and a prequel is coming out at the end of the month. The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi is gay as heck and has its toots in Ghanian and Arabian mythology. And before Malinda Lo was winning National Book Awards, she was kicking off the queer YA revolution with books like Ash, Huntress, and Adaptation (fantasy, fantasy, sci-fi).

There has never been a better time to be a queer woman who loves stories about women who wield magic and swords.

8. Video Games

Video games are more popular than ever, with endless platforms to play on, including your very own phone! The tricky thing about getting into gaming is that the upfront cost can be pretty steep. Even the cheapest Nintendo Switch + a game will run you $250. But! Gaming consoles and games are an investment in fun that always pay dividends. You will be shocked by how much time you’ll spend losing yourself in cozy worlds like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, or sneaky heartbreaking queer worlds like The Last of Us or Life Is Strange, or heroic open-world games like Horizon Zero Dawn or Assassin’s Creed. You’ll also be surprised, I bet, by how much self-discovery you do while roaming around these virtual lands.

The first step is to decide what kind of games you want to play. Brighter, cozier, cute critter games? Probably a Nintendo is best for you. Want to dive into major studio action-adventure and role-playing games? You can pick up a used PS4 or even PS3 to test out the mechanics and see if you want to spring for a newer XBox or Playstation. There are also LOADS of playthroughs on YouTube, so you can get a feel for the games before you buy them. ALB in Whisperland is a queer creator and one of my favorite cozy game players. The ASMR Nerd is a very cool guy from Canada who plays a lot of RPGs (on a PC, but the vibe is the same). I like ASMR gamers because they don’t yell and aren’t jerks.

Update: I’ve heard from a reader who’s a librarian who tells me you can now borrow games and even some consoles from libraries! So definitely check your local library and see what options they have!

If you have any tips or questions about nerding out, I’d love to hear them in the comments!