The Gayest Things You Can Do In Video Games To Celebrate Pride
Go On A Gay Date - Hades, Boyfriend Dungeon, Dream Daddy
James: Boyfriend Dungeon was one of my five bi awakenings. If you don’t know, bisexuals go through five bi awakenings before reaching their true form, a sort of hormonal demon with giant spikes that likes to sit with their legs curled around the arms of a desk chair. This was one of those awakenings. You get to romance hot twink guys and artsy depressed girls, making for a bisexual Achilles heel. I’m the mark, and this game sucked me in and didn’t let up. And please don’t read that the wrong way. I see you.
“I play Hades for the gameplay.”
The gameplay:
Get Married - Skyrim, Stardew Valley, Fable
Lex: Video games are pretty lonely places sometimes. I fetch soup ingredients for lazy town folks, I kill ten Mudcrabs for an army that can't handle local fauna, and I kill beings of unfathomable power. Alone.
But some games… Well, some games understand that humans are not meant to be alone. So whether it be finding an Abigail to stargaze with, a knight to rule your kingdom alongside or a Lydia to glitch up the side of every mountain with you - find your someone. Don't let anyone stop you from finding your lifetime co-op partner. Even if it means installing some mods to be together.
If we are being honest, isn’t marriage the ultimate escort mission?
No. No, it is not. It is more like a couch-coop game.
Don't Get Married - Wonder The Wasteland in Fallout With Your Partner [gay]
James: I’m not big on marriage. You slap a couple rings on and somehow your relationship is more valid than others. Yawn. But I’m also a child of divorce and as you all know, we’re petty little pricks. Cheery stuff, eh? Well, my war against marriage aside, there’s no need to bring it into games. I love bringing Piper along with me to slaughter Mirelurks as we gaze into each other’s pinkeye, guts and blood and radioactive water splashed on our clothes. It’s romantic, even if a little filthy. But what’s romance without a touch of filth? The Wasteland is a lonely place, so it’s only right you bring someone along with you to freshen things up, to make it nice and fruity.
Stop the presses, Piper! We are going on queer adventures!
Play Matchmaker - The Sims
Lex: I don't play The Sims but from what I can gather there are three main objectives:
Create nightmare monsters in the character creator.
Invite your enemies over for a party and then trap them in a swimming pool until the drown.
Create your own gay-ass dating show where you try to matchmake all the sims in your town in queer relationships.
Oh, right… I forget the fourth main objective of The Sims… Its… whatever this nightmare child is.
Throw The Sims in Trash And Get Serious
Lex: Sure it is all well and good to set Sims up on dates and listen to them speak soft nothing's to each other in Simlish. But that just isn't good enough anymore. These games, with their "mechanics" and "rules", stop the real stories from being told…
I know for a fact that John Halo would be in a loving relationship with the Doomslayer!
I know that Lara Croft and Samus spent their honeymoon in France!
I KNOW THAT ALL THE ZADDIES AND BADDIES IN RESIDENT EVIL ARE IN AN OPEN POLYAMOROUS RELATIONSHIP!
James! Get me a Moleskine notebook and a quill. I have some important fanfic to make up journalism to report!
Having done some googling for an image for this one… We’re going to go with this instead, so startmenu doesn’t end up on a watchlist…
Go Shopping - Legendary Gauntlets? Sound Pretty Gay
James: Dark Souls is a bleak, depressing, and barren game. It’s about the death of the universe and a cycle of meaningless champions. Again, bleak. But forget the apocalypse for just a moment and indulge me. Fashion Souls. You might’ve heard the term. It’s when people mix-and-match clothes and armour in Soulsborne games to look pretty, cool, or pretty cool. I like to look pretty. I had my yellow princess getup for a little while, wearing the Xanthous crown and some other bright coloured tidbits, all to make me a beaming ray of sunshine. But I’ve also dabbled in my purples, pinks, and blues, because if a game has those colours, you’d best believe I’m gonna find a way to pull all three off so I can look like a bisexual icon while I’m slaughtering demigods.
Little known bit of Destiny lore.
The Ahamkara - the wish granting magic dragons? Yep, all gay.
Apex Legends - It’s For The Queers
Have you seen these playable characters?
This is actually just a picture of startmenu finally meeting up at EGX later this Summer.
Do anything in a JRPG - Roleplay? Dressing up? Swords? Magic? Self-improvement [leveling up]? Killing God?
James: Grinding. Do I need to say more? We literally have a queer dating app called Grindr. Okay, I’ll say more. Something you can do to celebrate this year’s pride is go off to your favourite MMO or RPG and get stuck in grinding. Is it boring? Sure. But pretend you’re in a gay club grinding on someone. Maybe that’ll help with the monotony. Or just go out and do that. Whatever floats your boat.
Me and the gang heading off to the big Tesco:
Kirby!
The photographer for this shoot was @skullmillione on Twitter.
Write Morrowind Fanfic In Morrowind
James: Morrowind has this neat feature when you’re making a custom class where you can enter a description—a description you type up yourself. The idea is that you can explain why Wibbly Wobbly Magician Man #423 is different from Wibbly Wobbly Magician Man #422, but I use it to flesh out my character’s backstory, not their class. Naomi is a bloodthirsty dark elf assassin who got caught peddling skooma on the streets of Kvatch, and Gerard is a lost soul who had a rough night out after his band split up, roaming the streets of Bruma, drunk as a horker.
But this Pride Month, I’m gonna change things up—we’re getting gay with it. I’ll exclusively use colourful magic, call my class the Queer Parade, my character Iero, and together we’ll embark on a wonderfully emo and gay jaunt. I can sprinkle in a bit of fanservice, turning Iero and Jiub into lost souls who found kindred spirits in each other, a real n’wah-turned-LGBTQ+ romance that can rival Heartstopper’s most intimate moments. The only limit is your mind, meaning that you can make Morrowind the gayest game ever this Pride Month.
Great. I called over to my skooma guy and now he wants me to his manuscript for his book.
