Be Gay Do Games
Apr. 8th, 2023 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingThis is a bit personal, but I want to talk about how I view queer representation in video games.
I'm bisexual and nonbinary, and my experience of queerness hasn't been pleasant, to be honest.
I was a scholarship student at a private (but non-religious) international high school, and I lost my scholarship and was essentially kicked out of school when someone outed me as being in a queer relationship with another student. When my parents found out, they kicked me out of the house.
Thankfully, with the help of a few friends, I was able to go to college a year early. Unfortunately, when I dated in college, I was bullied by my gay and straight friends and partners alike for being bisexual. Things have gotten much better since then, and I've found love and acceptance in my relationships with my spouse and my found family.
Meanwhile, on the internet, I'm sporadically harassed, misgendered, and told to kill myself by both alt-right holdovers and members of various queer communities. I don't think I'm especially "problematic," but this experience of social media harassment isn't uncommon for marginalized writers and artists who create queer-coded fanwork about video games. Ironically, a lot of these calls are coming from inside the house.
So, while it's always nice to see canonically queer or nonbinary video game characters, I'd much rather a character be interesting than exist solely to serve as representation. To me, and to many of my queer gamer friends, it's often much more satisfying to create our own representation by reading games in a queer way and drawing out the subtext. In other words, the actual text of the game is less important than the ways in which it can be read. To give an example, I am extremely gay for whatever is going on between Zelda and Midna in Twilight Princess.
I've actually gotten really angry at "official" LGBTQIA+ Representation™ in AAA games, especially when it stinks of rainbow capitalism. I'm also not a fan of the recent tendency for stories directed at a young adult audience to present queer sexuality as perfect and pure, or as somehow occupying a moral high ground. This has especially been the case with high-profile indie games that make it to the console market.
My frustration with the sanitized commodification of queer sexuality and queer gender identity in video game storylines has impacted me in three ways. First, I've found myself increasingly drawn to horror games that are more willing to engage with the "monstrous" aspects of non-normative positionalities. Second, I've been playing a lot more super-indie unpolished passion projects that reflect the complications of individual queer experiences. And third, I've been inspired to create my own representation, even if it's not fit for a commercial audience.
More than the representation of fictional queer characters, what I'd really like to see represented are real-life queer creators! More often than not, the "worst representation" is created by actual queer people, so I'd like there to be more supportive and inclusive spaces for queer creators both in online gaming journalism and at in-person gaming conventions. Abstract representation is all well and good, but what I really want are concrete opportunities.
I'm bisexual and nonbinary, and my experience of queerness hasn't been pleasant, to be honest.
I was a scholarship student at a private (but non-religious) international high school, and I lost my scholarship and was essentially kicked out of school when someone outed me as being in a queer relationship with another student. When my parents found out, they kicked me out of the house.
Thankfully, with the help of a few friends, I was able to go to college a year early. Unfortunately, when I dated in college, I was bullied by my gay and straight friends and partners alike for being bisexual. Things have gotten much better since then, and I've found love and acceptance in my relationships with my spouse and my found family.
Meanwhile, on the internet, I'm sporadically harassed, misgendered, and told to kill myself by both alt-right holdovers and members of various queer communities. I don't think I'm especially "problematic," but this experience of social media harassment isn't uncommon for marginalized writers and artists who create queer-coded fanwork about video games. Ironically, a lot of these calls are coming from inside the house.
So, while it's always nice to see canonically queer or nonbinary video game characters, I'd much rather a character be interesting than exist solely to serve as representation. To me, and to many of my queer gamer friends, it's often much more satisfying to create our own representation by reading games in a queer way and drawing out the subtext. In other words, the actual text of the game is less important than the ways in which it can be read. To give an example, I am extremely gay for whatever is going on between Zelda and Midna in Twilight Princess.
I've actually gotten really angry at "official" LGBTQIA+ Representation™ in AAA games, especially when it stinks of rainbow capitalism. I'm also not a fan of the recent tendency for stories directed at a young adult audience to present queer sexuality as perfect and pure, or as somehow occupying a moral high ground. This has especially been the case with high-profile indie games that make it to the console market.
My frustration with the sanitized commodification of queer sexuality and queer gender identity in video game storylines has impacted me in three ways. First, I've found myself increasingly drawn to horror games that are more willing to engage with the "monstrous" aspects of non-normative positionalities. Second, I've been playing a lot more super-indie unpolished passion projects that reflect the complications of individual queer experiences. And third, I've been inspired to create my own representation, even if it's not fit for a commercial audience.
More than the representation of fictional queer characters, what I'd really like to see represented are real-life queer creators! More often than not, the "worst representation" is created by actual queer people, so I'd like there to be more supportive and inclusive spaces for queer creators both in online gaming journalism and at in-person gaming conventions. Abstract representation is all well and good, but what I really want are concrete opportunities.
no subject
Date: 2023-04-10 08:49 pm (UTC)I was trying to explain to someone how bad it felt in FFXIII when The Lesbians TM were the ones who got shoved in a box and got sneered at for bringing "identity politics" into it and it was just....it sucked. A lot!
I think there's a lot of awkwardness where queer representation of any kind is apparently grounds for being torn apart - from the right because you put the gross gay in a thing that someone might see, ever, and have to contend with the idea that gay people exist, and from the left because your queer content is (too unrealistic in a bad or good way, you're making X look bad, you're ignoring the real actual struggles of queer people because Y, the list goes on). I feel like some of that is down to how little specifically queer content there is, but rainbow-washing and queerbaiting are a struggle just like when I read something/watch something and go "wow there was not a single queer person in there."
...I think I meant to argue a point and I've lost the thread, so I'll just say: more concrete opportunities, and more representation generally.
no subject
Date: 2023-04-12 08:31 pm (UTC)Especially about FFXIII.
no subject
Date: 2023-04-14 04:23 am (UTC)Because that's the thing, right. It's never about the one vigilante motivated by the death of his family, or the one queer couple that dies, or the one woman who sacrifices for the hero. It's when that thing becomes the default.