Week 7: (spoilers) Ashley Johnson’s Character is Canonically Queer
Honestly, the main thing I didn’t like about this week’s reading is that it kind of “investigated” queer gamers as though there was something strange and mysterious to be understood about them. Or maybe that was just the vibe I got. But the fact that they just got a handful of queer people together to chat about videogames seemed more like a casual Friday night get together than something worthy of publication. I guess Grace put it best in her blog: it felt pretty “othering.”
However, I do appreciate what it was ultimately trying to do. I thought the three strategies through which queer people “performed” their sexuality through gameplay were interesting. It also made me think (obviously) about The Last of Us. In The Last of Us: Left Behind, DLC released less than a year after the original game, there is a kind of prequel quest in which one gets to learn more about Ellie, the main character in The Last of Us, and her friend Riley, who was bitten by a zombie prior to the start of the original game. Towards the end of this adventure, Ellie and Riley share a kiss, and game creators have confirmed that the kiss was, in fact, romantic and Ellie is, indeed, queer.
I knew about this aspect of Ellie’s character before starting the game, but I think it’s interesting to think about people who have played the game without any knowledge of Ellie’s sexuality, either because they played before the DLC was released or because they live under a rock. There is nothing Ellie does that is overly performatively or stereotypically queer, but I have to wonder if queer people who have played without this knowledge engaged in “imaginative play” with Ellie as described in this weeks reading. Or did they maybe do it with Joel, who has a mysterious former marriage that he never elaborates on and no apparent love interests, male or female? Or did they just content themselves with Bill, a temporary side character who is canonically gay in the original game?
