"You Tellin' Me a Queer Coded this Villain?"

HAPPY PRIDE 2022!

We are back for an all new season of Gay For Play, and we're kicking it off by talking about Queer & Queer-*Coded* Villains in video games.

Queer coding the bad guy is a trope seen in media for ages, dating back to old Hollywood censorship laws & really entering our generation's collective consciousness through the villains of the Disney Renaissance of the 1990s, right around the same time that the medium of video games started to come into their own.

Eric and Laurence discuss how this trope came about and why this trope is harmful, but also why we sometimes have a soft-spot for a queer-coded baddie!  We get into our favorite examples of queer-coded villains, as well as some canonically LGBTQ villains in games.



Links to articles/videos discussed this episode:

-Is Ghirahim Gay or Just Coded That Way? | Queer Tropes in Video Games by Feminist Frequency (via Youtube)
-"What Queer Coded Villains Teach Us" by Maddie Ray
-"Video Game Baddies and the Power Behind Reclaiming Queer Villainy" by Taryn Urban for Gayming Mag
-"Not Just Queer Coded, These Disney Villains Were Designed by a Gay Man" by Taylor Henderson for pride.com

What Else We're Gay For This Week:

-Pokémon Scarlet & Violet
-"What's your gender?" by PurpleSloth on itch.io
-Fortnite : Zero Build Mode
-PlayStation's June 2022 State of Play

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CREDITS
Intro and outro music by Connor Marsh (@connorjmarshmallow)

Show art by Benny Kessler (@retro.spectacle.studio)

Special thanks to our patrons: Blueberri Mary, Elijah Punzal,  Trevor McTavish & Martha Turner <3

MUSIC THIS WEEK:
"Advent: One Winged Angel" - by Nobuo Uematsu (arr. Shirou Hamaguchi and Kenichiro Fukui)