Generation drag12/5/2023 ![]() Projects like SlayStation empower players by showing them an angle on gaming culture they would otherwise miss, because mass-market games could never present some of the raunchy, lewd, or transgressive ideas which drag revels in. Yet sexuality is a major component of the human experience, something people want to explore – so fans take up the slack. I think she's right: mainstream games, after all, despite being increasingly marketed toward adults, include very little exploration of sex and sexuality. Velvet Caveat as Bayonetta, photo by Matti Scicluna. When we offer a queer take on their favourite characters, we are giving people a dose of something they wish was reality, that would make gaming even better." "With SlayStation," Velvet told me, "we're giving people a medium they love, while fleshing it out in ways that the medium itself will never do. By exploring the character of Bayonetta through the medium of drag, Velvet and her fellow SlayStation artists are expanding the creative possibilities within gaming culture. Velvet Caveat's Bayonetta is a glorious revelation of the queerness already inherent in one of gaming's most beloved characters, instantly iconic. So, when Velvet Caveat takes to the stage as a picture-perfect Bayonetta, wielding the character's iconic dual pistols and dancing to Charli XCX's "Baby" with moves which could be drawn directly from the game, it feels like the character was made for drag. Bayonetta hardly needs queering, because she's queer af already – she has guns on her high heels! This makes Bayonetta a prime candidate for a drag performance, because her character already challenges rigid norms of sexuality and gender. ![]() ![]() Bayonetta is a prime example: she's unusually tall for a woman, is sex positive and kinky, and tends to be presented as a strong protagonist who frequently rescues male sidekick and himbo Luka, overturning the trite "damsel in distress" trope. First, you can select a character which already has queer traits. To get an insight into this new world, I spoke with Velvet Caveat (creator of SlayStation, a London "drag video game cabaret" dedicated to the mash-up of gaming and drag) who helped me understand the three main ways game characters can be presented in the medium of drag. Now, however, gaming has exploded from a niche hobby to a global obsession, and a new generation of fans is queering games in ways my younger self could never imagine, using drag as a medium to explore, examine, and expand gaming culture. As a teen and young adult, I experienced gaming as a resolutely straight hobby: romance, if there was any, was always heteronormative gender stereotypes were rigidly enforced and there was no sex in games hardly ever. ![]() I'd love to say Barbarian made me gay, that those tight thighs and pixel biceps sparked something queer in me – but my gay awakening came 20 years later. And I spent hours trying to complete Barbarian, an early fighting game which saw two loin-clothed muscle-men roll and kick and hack each other to death. I spent hours as a child watching my father battle his way through the ThunderCats side-scrolling platformer – I can still hear the crunchy "swoosh" of Lion-O's sword and the rising chirp of his jump – and looking over my mother's shoulder as she stalked the corridors of Dungeon Master, hiding when I heard the shuffle of the mummies. ![]() But, to me, it was a portal to other worlds. A boxy, beige monstrosity with a chunky keyboard and a polygonal mouse, the Amiga, an early home computer, wasn't much of a looker. I started gaming in 1989, at six years old, when my parents brought home an Amiga 500. Things get underway today as James Croft examines how a new generation of drag performers is combining its art and a deep love of video games to explore and reimagine what bolder, queerer gaming could be. Hello! Eurogamer is once again marking Pride with another week of features celebrating the intersection of queer culture and gaming in all its guises. ![]()
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