(HOW) HAVE LGBTQ FILM & LITERATURE SHAPED YOU?

When I saw P&P's latest writing prompt (How) Have LGBTQ Film & Literature Shaped You? I immediately began to wrack my brain about what queer films and literature I've engaged with in the past.

The problem there is that I'm not a big reader of fiction in general, and beyond a very queer film we watched in my my undergraduate sexuality and gender class (big shout out to Shortbus) I haven't watched much queer film or television either (I know, I know, how uncultured!).

As someone with ADHD I find it rare that a fiction book, film or TV programme can fully grab my attention without my mind wandering (and drama tends to get my anxiety levels up in an unpleasant way, too).

However, I do have one avenue for enjoying fiction narratives and storytelling: video games.

Video games have long been a solace of mine, from the good old days of Pokemon (and yes, I still play Pokemon as a 35 year-old, albeit on a full colour Nintendo DS rather than the old grayscale Gameboy) to more modern series like Skyrim, Fallout and Cyberpunk 2077.

For me video games are both entertainment and an escape from a world which, I'm sure you'll agree, definitely requires escaping from every once in a while.

The interactive and tactile aspect of video games helps maintain my ADHD-addled attention and allows me to fully immerse myself in some of the truly amazing narrative experiences that video games have to offer.

It's these more involved and character-driven aspects of video games which have helped me to understand and accept aspects of my queer identity.

Choose your character

I play a lot of RPGs (role playing games) where you get to design your own character to some extent, often including your character's gender (though arguably not often enough, with 'male' tending to be the default — am I right girls?).

I've previously written about how, before I came out as trans, my gender identity was something I suppressed subconsciously but which nevertheless expressed itself in ways which were not-so-obvious to me at the time, but which in retrospect were a sign that I was transgender.

The fact that where possible I often chose to play as a female character in games was definitely one of those signs.

Why didn't I play as male characters? Well, I just didn't relate to male characters. I like to make my characters in video games as close to me in real life as I can, and can't help but play games and make in-game choices based on my real life personality and morals.

One day I was considering this, and I thought to myself "but if I essentially like to play as myself, and I'm a boy, then why do I always choose female characters? Unless… I'm not a boy?".

It wasn't the 'aha' moment, but it was certainly one of them.

Of course, I'm not saying that a cis person playing as the opposite gender in a video game automatically means they're trans (if that was the case then all gamer girls would be trans, given the aforementioned discrepancy in male to female video game characters).

Being able to play as a female character in games was and continues to be something which has had a hugely positive impact in terms of accepting and affirming my gender identity (and I'm sure the latter goes for many cis women gamers, too).

Fallout: New Gender

I'm not alone in that experience. There's even a running joke among trans gamers about some games being 'egg cracking', referring to the process of someone coming to the realisation that they're transgender (or 'cracking their egg').

One game in particular stands out for this, to the point that there are more than a few memes about it, Fallout: New Vegas, a game set several hundred years after a nuclear war, in the Mojave region of the U.S. now known as 'The Wasteland'.

No one really has an answer for why the game is apparently 'egg cracking', and really the observation that the game was (and is) loved by so many would-be trans women is probably at least partly confirmation bias (it was and still is a hugely popular video game — lots of people liked it, not just trans girls).

But it might also have something to do with the fact that Fallout: New Vegas truly lets trans players integrate and express themselves through their characters, not just in design but in the depth of meaningful, choice-driven role-play the game allows.

The fact that the game was also somewhat of a pioneer in terms of queer representation in gaming likely also plays a part.

Fallout: New Vegas features queer characters written in a way that isn't stereotypical or tokenistic (though oddly enough, given its 'egg cracking' reputation, it features no canonically trans characters).

The game even allows for players to have same-sex relationships and marriages, despite being released in 2010 when gay marriage was still illegal in many countries (including the US where the game was developed).

Queer rights also feature prominently in the game's storylines, with certain factions either protecting or forbidding same-sex activity as part of their wider liberal or fascistic ethos — an ethos which players have to consider when deciding which factions to side with.

For many gamers, myself included, Fallout: New Vegas offered the first non-stereotyped, realistic (for a post-apocalyptic nightmare world, anyway) and often positive representation of queer lives in the kind of media we preferred.

Cybertrans 2021

Following in Fallout's irradiated footsteps, many newer games now allow players to choose the gender of their character and feature positive queer characters in-game.

Recently released space-based RPG Starfield even allows players to choose the pronouns of their character, including They/Them pronouns, allowing characters to play as nonbinary.

Another such game is Cyberpunk 2077, set in the dystopian near-future cyberpunk metropolis of Night City. When creating their in-game character players are even allowed to choose certain aspects of their character's anatomy without those choices having to match the character's gender, reflecting the lived reality of many trans people.

As a trans woman this was the first game in which I was able to design a character with a body type that truly matched my own.

That might seem a bit trivial or even weird, especially given that it's the character's gender identity which determines choices, dialogue and certain romance options in the game.

But as a trans person only recently out when the game released, experiencing severe dysphoria and crippling social anxiety about my body and presentation, the fact that the developers of such a huge game included this as an option meant a lot to me.

The Outer Sexuality

It's not just my transgender identity being represented in games which I've found helpful, but also my asexuality.

One game which does this really well, and which positively impacted me, is another space-based RPG, The Outer Worlds (it's probably not a coincidence that this game was produced by the very same studio as Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian Entertainment).

One of the characters you meet early on in the game is the sweet and empathic mechanic Parvati Holcomb (and the developers get extra points for giving this female character a non-stereotypical job-role).

You can choose to make Parvati one of your companions who accompanies you throughout the game and doing so opens up Parvati's storyline, which centres around her being asexual.

At no point is the term 'asexual' actually used in the game, however Parvati's story revolves around her wanting to ask out another character (who also happens to be a woman — even more points for queer representation). The thing is, Parvati doesn't like the physical side of relationships, and she's worried about how her would-be girlfriend might feel about that.

The game has received critical acclaim generally, but especially so for both the inclusion of an asexual character and how the game's narrative handles the topic of asexuality.

Poor Parvati has received some pretty appalling treatment due to her asexuality. Through dialogue and actions, players are able to reassure and encourage Parvati by essentially challenging negative stereotypes about asexuality in a positive and decidedly wholesome way.

But The Outer Worlds goes even further than this: not only can players choose to support and encourage Parvati, the game provides certain dialogue options which allow the player to reveal that they are also asexual and thus empathise with Parvati's experiences.

It's not an exaggeration to say that this aspect of the game was, well, game-changing for me (pun absolutely intended). Supporting Parvati to accept her asexual identity helped me to realise that I was asexual and ultimately to accept my sexuality.

The fact that a video game managed this is testament to the empathy and ingenuity of it's developers, and you can tell that one of the team responsible for designing Parvati's character and storyline, Kate Dollarhyd, is herself asexual. It's a case of great representation as a result of diversity in the game development industry itself.

More than just a game

I think some people still tend to think of video games as being a bit 'silly' or immature, but today video games are often at the forefront of storytelling; that means they are also often at the forefront of representation for marginalised groups, not just queer folks but women, disabled people and ethnic minorities, too.

Not only have video games provided me with the opportunity to engage with fiction, something which I otherwise tend to find difficult due to my disabilities, but they've also given me the opportunity to understand and accept different aspects of my queer identity.

And for that I am incredibly grateful, not least because video game developers have often insisted on queer inclusion in the face of complaints and even threats of violence from certain, let's just say less than open-minded, sections of the gaming community.

Queer representation in games is nothing new. That said, we still have a long way to go, with meaningful, well-developed queer characters who are central to the plot of a game often still being the exception rather than the rule.

Nonetheless, video games have been a key part of exploring and accepting my queer identity, and with the ever-growing popularity of video gaming today hopefully they'll continue to be part of so many people's journey to queer self-acceptance for many years to come.

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This story is a response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt, (How) Have LGBTQ Film & Literature Shaped You?

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