If Trans* Fish Could Sing: Trans* Embodiment in the Video Game

Abstract

This research-creation project is a study in the video game’s mediation of trans embodiment through the non-human. The non-human encapsulates the monstrous, the animal, and the inanimate, including tools used to make audiovisual media. Multiple independent games have used the non-human to express trans experiences or gender beyond cis-normative binaries. These games use monsters or animals as their characters, or implement non-conventional coding practices to reject cis-heteronormative structures of representation. Using the creation of the author’s own video game, and research across trans scholarship in the non-human and video games, this research-creation project examines possibilities for trans game practices.