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To do it right, I believe that you not only have to place your queer characters on equal footing: you also have to give them options, and allow them to fully experience the game’s content as a queer character. Games like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and Dreamfall Chapters both fell short of this when they wrote in various moments and plot points where your character’s identity was ignored for the sake of moving the plot forward (the DLC, and Anna hitting on Kian, respectively). And even when one’s life isn’t on the line, it’s important to make sure that your queer characters are allowed to remain queer. Nobody wants to see someone like them be the only one to not make it out (i.e. Just putting queer characters in a game isn’t enough as far as positive representation goes, and making them suffer unduly without a course of survival can be harmful for sensitive players to experience. Now, of course, there’s a way to do this wrong. Yes, the world as the characters know it is collapsing, but it would have collapsed anyway-having a gay old time won’t change that. But if you do kiss Chloe, a new path opens up for you to explore, with absolutely no risk posed as a result. There’s nothing to lose if the player goes one way or another: for instance, in Life is Strange, if you decide not to kiss Chloe, she’ll still be gay, and she’ll still be very gay in your interpersonal orbit. If the game is written in a way that’s compassionate, informative, and explorative in nature, then it can provide a controlled experience for queer kids to try something new. Therefore, as strange as it may sound, video games can provide that sort of safe and nurturing environment. Why else did I only wear the masculine version of the school uniform? Why else did I get nervous around some girls, the way I got nervous around boys? Why else did queer rep matter to me so much, as an “ally”? Even if I couldn’t figure out what my exact label was, I knew, suddenly and wondrously, that I was queer. For the first time in my life, I sat down and asked myself, Are you really straight? And the more I thought about it, the more I found myself unable to say, Yes. Although we were not religious ourselves, and the choice of school was purely academic, it still didn’t leave me with a lot of room to question myself further.īut then, a video game called Life is Strange was released in my senior year, and with it came a natural narrative of sapphic love-completely unknown to me, yet at the same time, somehow familiar. For years, I believed I was simply an ally, one of few outspoken allies in the entire school, whose family had queer history and whose politics always leaned left. Believe it or not, Catholic school wasn’t the best place to come to terms with one’s sexual identity.