The Massive Effect of a Gay Shepard Playthrough

It’s here, and you didn’t need a Prothean beacon to tell you about it.

Several years ago I attempted to play through the Mass Effect series with my morally acrobatic but overall paragon Femshep. By the time I got to the third game I began to have this sinking feeling that something wasn’t right.

No, it wasn’t the fact that her lips were more than slightly and comically pronounced as if she got a heavy dose of some drag queen level fillers. The first game’s graphics wound up not portraying this fact very well, so it wasn’t until Mass Effect 2 that I began to see the cosmetic horror I had created. Still, I loved her. And she loved Kaidan. And then she loved Garrus. And then she started to love Kaidan again in Mass Effect 3.

And that is when the sinking feeling began.

You see, I didn’t expect to like Mass Effect so much. For years I saw it as an overly action-y diet RPG and I unconsciously resented it for depriving me of a KOTOR 3. In fact, the first couple of hours were very much a “been there, done that” experience considering that, mechanically, it felt very much like KOTOR, aside from the shooting stuff. Go to this planet. Use the force, er, um… the Mass Effect.

But then Virmire happened. And while this planet was the typical plot twist that Bioware has written time and again, this particular permutation is what elevated the series and its emphasis on choices and consequences. It was from Virmire on that I began to truly love the series. So why did I stop playing my Femshep story?

Romance. Bioware romance in particular. I’m a junky for it. Starting with Baldur’s Gate 2 and then continuing with KOTOR and the proto-Kaidan hunk that was Carth Onasi, and of course now with Mass Effect.

My weakness to this silly narrative device now causes me to base entire RPG experiences around who my lover will be. It’s ironic that I still gravitate to this as a gay adult with a husband, but it all began when I was an isolated not-out gay teenager who was desperate for examples of love that I was scared I would not ever find for myself.

Which means I’m no stranger to playing as women in RPG’s. In some ways it’s more compelling but for years it was also the only way I could hear another man tell me he loved me, even though it was all a fiction.

So playing Femshep was not a problem for me. Jennifer Hale’s voice acting didn’t hurt either. Playing Femshep gave me access to all of those juicy, juicy (okay, only a couple) love scenes and all that flirty dialogue.

But then Mass Effect 3 started to happen. And Mass Effect 3 also gives the player access, finally, to some same sex romances, besides Liara. So as my Femshep chatted away with Kaidan in the hospital, asking forgiveness for working with Cerberus and cheating on Kaidan with Garrus (poor Garrus, he turned out to be amazing!), I realized that I could have been romancing Kaidan *as a man*.

Emotional paralysis set in. Should I forge ahead with Femshep, or could I trudge through the romantic desert of the first two games with a Gayshep? Instead of deciding, I set the game aside and never looked back.

Well, that’s not true. I looked back quite a bit. Then, several years later, with the release of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition I finally had a chance to rectify this.

At first I was daunted by the fear of missing out. I mean, nothing was stopping me from sleeping with whoever I wanted, right? Wouldn’t Kaidan still love me anyway?

Saving Kaidan in Mass Effect 1 basically locked Shepard into being a gold star gay anyway, at least for that game. So, I had to imagine the sexual tension between Kaidan and Shepard because Kaidan barely talked to me anyway.  Seriously though, even for Femshep Kaidan is a decent if overlooked lover in the first game but I have some suspicions that the developers never expected Femshep to become as iconic as she did. It’s just a straight boys’ world and everyone else is just living in it, am I right? (Sarcasm)

Don’t mind me, just logging into engineer4biotic.com

The long, sexless, loveless slog continued through Mass Effect 2, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. Of course, Mass Effect 2 on its own is amazing, as far a characters and story go, so it wasn’t a hardship. In fact, it started to make sense. Sure, there were still advances from women, unconsented ones I might add, and I did wind up having to tell Miranda that we’d just be friends.

In fact, interacting with squad mates felt just like being gay and not 100% out would. You avoid women who might have a thing for you because you don’t want it to get awkward. You feel occasionally feel awkward buddying up to other guys because, well, it will never go the way you would ideally want so, again, awkward.

Not time for love. Just duty I guess. That’s what made sense.

In many ways, the character of Shepard is a composite of many western action heroes from all sorts of media like novels, television, film, comics, etc. And for characters in those mediums, it is always the mission that comes first. James Bond, for example, famously has flings with countless women, but they are all momentary dalliances. Just physical fun until the right opportunity to drive the mission home presented itself, with only a couple of exceptions.

And like James Bond, the straight player has several opportunities to appease Shepard’s physical needs, even if some of those turn out to be more serious. But they don’t have to. Choose a new partner each game if you want. Be just like James Bond, but in space. Don’t let anyone too close, and just use them for sex or something.

Bond never looked like this.

And let’s be real, if Gayshep has just as many opportunities to sleep around don’t think players wouldn’t.

But it’s getting to Mass Effect 3 where things began to change. I knew I could finally have my chance, so after every mission I found myself compulsively checking personal messages, showing up at the hospital where Kaidan was recovering, and eventually rejoining with him.

I couldn’t help it. I’d spent two games not just denying my desires, but having the games deny me any way to express them.

Oops, Kaidan’s shirt disappeared when Shepard walked in.

And then once things started for real with Kaidan, it was better than ever. We had put Cerberus behind us, he complimented me, he told me that we could be there for each other as the galaxy fell apart. Sign me up. He even cooked allegedly Canadian cuisine which is apparently alliterative as well.

The game changed. Literally. In the game I had someone to live for, to fight for, and it wasn’t just work any more. It was personal. It was intimate. It was no longer about the mission, about duty, and when it was about those things my squad mate and partner Kaidan would be there to share the burden so that we could both, hopefully, see it to the end.

Until the end, that is.

I knew that the ending was… controversial. I had avoided spoilers for the better part of a decade as to why, specifically, the ending was controversial, but I had my suspicions. Epic games like this lend themselves to high stakes and high costs. It’s not mystery what that could mean.

So when Shepard called in for an emergency evac to extract Kaidan and Liara (my main squad when ever I could get them), I knew this would be tough. I had been dreading this moment. I didn’t want it to happen. I considered stopping the game right then and there for a moment. Yes, they did share their “I love yous”, yes it was a tender moment despite the terrific and frightful battlefield.

Sigh… *cries*

But then… ugh. Kaidan’s face as Shepard went off to do the heroic thing. His face said it all. And it broke me. I mean really, congrats to the animators on this one. Kaidan’s eyebrows deserve an award. It was perfect and terrible all at once. And that was actually the end of the game for me.

Yes, I did beat the rest, but it didn’t matter as much.

My senior English teacher said that true death is when the ego ceases to exist, the sense of “I am”. When one no longer has that sense, they are dead, even if their body still lives.

And at that moment in Mass Effect 3, me as the person playing Shepard had no more ego. Everything that had brought my Shepard to life was back on the Normandy. The mission had ceased being the driving force because Shepard had found something more personal, more fulfilling.

And yes, it was romance, Bioware’s cheap, drug-like, melodramatic love . But it was also validation, and acceptance, and representation and everything that I hadn’t realized I had been doing without in a video game, because you know what? LGBT people don’t get those things thrown at us as often in real life either.

Mine and my Shepard’s ego in the world of Mass Effect had become a fully realized gay person. He wasn’t just a soldier anymore. He was fully human. He loved and could give love. Isn’t that why it was worth fighting the Reapers?

And he had to give it up.

I played through the last several minutes in a heartbroken, dissociative haze. It didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel important. Perhaps that what it would have taken if the game were real, such depersonalization in order to act in circumstances that are literally larger than life. But it wasn’t about Kaidan, so I didn’t really care anymore.

Okay maybe a little, but it didn’t matter nearly as much as the sorrowful man on the Normandy adding my Shepard’s name plate to the rest of the crew’s fallen. What about Kaidan, now? Should I even ask?

I don’t regret anything, though. It’s still a great series. Besides, there is always another run but with Steve Cortez, instead. Maybe I can do a bit of Project Lazarus myself and get Femshep going again. But I think this first complete run to the end with Kaidan will always stick out. He was there at the beginning, and almost there until the end. If only I could stop thinking about those mournful eyebrows…

To Be Takei. Or Not To Be? That Is the Question.

Some of us are afraid to be defined by some of our own features. It’s easy to imagine ourselves in caricature, like my childhood self who was ashamed of the freckles and big front teeth that surely would have dominated a comic sketch of my face.

George Takei is someone who could easily have let his life define him. He could have been a gay Asian man too ashamed of his orientation to pursue acting, and too burdened by the memory of being imprisoned by his own country for being Japanese-American to strive for anything more than to avoid further instances of racism.

Instead, he is a well known actor, activist for marriage equality and gay rights, and a devoted husband to his partner of over two decades. That certainly doesn’t seem like a man avoiding who he is.

In my family, George Takei is a household name. Unlike other children born in the 80’s my first major Star Trek experience was the original series instead of The Next Generation. That’s what happens when you live in a foreign country and have a VCR and the entire show on VHS, you binge watch episodes like candy. This normal for me and my parents.

So when George Takei came out in 2005, it was definitely interesting news for us, especially me, since Sulu was a childhood hero of mine alongside Spock and the gang.  Over the years, I watched as George stood up time and again, leveraging his reputation to advance important causes for gay people.

The documentary does a good job relating all of these things, not so much in chronological order as much as it tries to connect all of George’s pursuits to the reasons behind his passions. His family’s internment in concentration camps during World War 2 is a major inspiration for his current endeavor, the musical Allegiance. There is also his sexual orientation, which he had to hide during his early acting career, like so many others in that time.

While the documentary doesn’t showcase very much that was new, that can be attributed to the fact that George Takei is already quite open about himself. One point that did come through quite well was his sense of optimism he said he has maintained throughout his life. While it doesn’t hurt to be successful, there is something to be said for how much he attributes his own success to this optimism.

The fact that he is an activist for the gay community also shows that he understands that his success is something he can leverage to aid others who share his struggles. I still remember when he called out my home state of Tennessee, which attempted to outlaw the usage of the word “gay” in public schools. While my state still lags behind in the rights it extends to LGBT people, his campaign of “It’s okay to be Takei” still gives hope that even the most conservative states will be unable to conserve the bigotry that they hold as sacred.

Overall, it was enjoyable to watch. George Takei has overcome racism and bigotry, has found success, love, and still makes time to pave the way for others to share in the opportunities he has had. This single documentary doesn’t make everything better for everyone, but perhaps it still serves as a beacon of hope for those languishing in the dark places where mysticism and hatred oppressively flourish.

Remembering that George Takei is a household name for me and my parents, as is everything Star Trek, it reminds me of when I noticed my father had liked George’s page on Facebook. This was before I had come out to my parents, and saw that my father, who had also grown up with Star Trek, had been able to look past race and sexuality  to have a good laugh every now and then from the hilarious content posted there. This gave me a inkling of the acceptance I would eventually get.

On the other hand, at a wedding several months later, after I had come out to my parents, I had an uncle of the backwards and conservative type come up and try to be chummy with me. The way he mentioned that my father and I followed “that George Takahashi-or-whatever-his-name-is” on Facebook was dripping with such racism and disdain that I realized some people will never wake up from their ignorance.

It is people like that who can make us want to hide, or even change who we are. However, we all have a chance to be who we want sooner or later. While it may seem difficult to accept those things about us that others seem to hate, it starts starts with ourselves. If we all retreated from the truth of who we are, then there would be no documentary that charts the achievements of George, and it wouldn’t be okay to be Takei.

Music I Like: Scissor Sisters

Of course I’m a fan of the band, but in this case I also mean their eponymously named debut album. While it wasn’t a huge success in my home country, the USA, it was a huge hit in the UK when it was released in 2004. The band, currently on hiatus (major sad face) released three more albums, but their first will always be special to me.

My first exposure to Scissor Sisters was in a brief spot during a commercial break on MTV. They were showcased as a “new band to watch” or some such and were compared to Elton John and glam rock acts from the 70s. These comparisons and a brief interview with the band members piqued my curiosity in a unique and discreet kind of a way.

I felt I could identify with them, as if they spoke in code and it was meant for people like me to decipher it.

Of course, what I mean is my sexuality. I was closeted at the time, nearly a year out of high school, and in the middle of a long string of years where I was trying to figure out what I wanted out of my life.  Without saying it directly, I knew that Scissor Sisters, in some way, represented gay culture, and I wanted in on it.

While most if not all of the band members have stated that they fall somewhere within the LGBT spectrum, back in 2004 this was still a touchy issue. Plus, they were a new musical act, and America is notoriously homophobic within show business for some odd reason, so they were probably advised to keep a low profile if they wanted to break into the music scene in a big way.

Regardless, it was with a wink and a nod that I came to a mutual understanding with the sisters of the scissors.

Their big hit at the time was “Take Your Mama”.  The video was campy and quirky. The lyrics on the other hand quite clearly conveyed the process of coming out to one’s mother, and letting her know that being gay can be pretty fabulous.

While I was still a long way from doing that myself, the message was still quite clear, and that it was wrapped up in an awesome song with infectious energy was confirmation that I was destined to love this band.

The only problem with the song?

I didn’t hear it nearly enough on the radio.

Sure there was the internet, but even in 2004 we still had dial-up at my house and I had yet to develop the habit of tracking down music files and internet videos like a bloodhound. Instead, I decided that I needed to buy the album.

So, of I went on my quest in search of the CD that would grant me endless repetitions of what were sure to be my new favorite songs, but, alas, East Tennessee proved to be a barren wasteland when it came to that kind of music.

There’s a desolate feeling that comes over you when you when you feel like you are the sole person in the market for gay music, alone, and in the closet. I cursed my home town for its poor taste. Even the independent disc exchanges, who still sold vinyl records before hipsters made that and chugging PBRs popular again, didn’t carry Scissor Sisters.

My response was to pop my cherry, and by that I mean that I made my first ever music purchase on the internet. I found the album on Amazon.com and waited while it shipped to my home. I think the CD may have even been delivered from the UK.

A few days later, I finally found my bliss in the eclectic assortment of musical goodness that only Scissor Sisters can provide. From the opening pounding of piano chords of “Laura” to the haunting harmonies of “Return to Oz”, I found more love in each track than Rihanna could find in a hopeless place.

What is so great about this album is that if the song isn’t just about having a fun time, being one’s fabulous self, then it’s about something else relating to what it’s like being gay.

“Filthy Gorgeous” illustrates what it’s like in the more debauched scenes, while “Lovers in the Back Seat” gives you a taste of the voyeuristic side of making love. Sometimes, when it’s hard to be yourself out in the open, then even your trysts have to be discreet. This is one of my favorite tracks.

But there are two tracks in particular that take the cake for me. The first is the anthemic “It Can’t Come Quickly Enough”.  It’s soaring synths are both uplifting and deep, and they provide a perfect background to the introspective lyrics.

The second is perhaps one of my favorite ever songs by the Scissor Sisters: “Mary”.  The song is actually dedicated to lead singer Jake Shears’ friend who passed away. But even without knowing that it’s easy to pick up on the intense and platonic, yet genuine love he felt for his friend.

This is something very true about gay people.  Just because we prefer real love with someone of the same gender doesn’t mean that we can’t ever connect with someone of the opposite. We all have a Mary in our lives with whom we share a connection deeper than sexual desire, something complex that isn’t complicated by physical attraction.

This song simply and effectively expresses those feelings.

Furthermore, the video released for this song features gorgeous animation by the famous Don Bluth. It’s hard to find, but it’s worth viewing.

As you can now see, the album is personally significant to me, and continues to resonate with me. Time has only layered more experience upon me to ensure that my thoughts regarding the music here are permanently imbedded into my soul. Ten years later, and it’s still I’ve of my ask time favorites.

Is Star Trek’s “The Outcast” Gay Enough?

The Outcast is one of Star Trek’s most controversial episodes. While it certainly isn’t the only one to address gender and sexuality, it is one that attempted to directly address the issue of homosexuality, something long promised since Star Trek: The Next Generation’s inception.

The episode follows Riker and his collaboration with Soren, member of an androgynous race, to rescue missing scientists. Soren’s curiosity about humanity leads to her discreet revelation that she, unlike most of her kind, has a sense of gender, female, and is attracted to males, to Riker.

The romance is treated tenderly, unlike space player Riker’s other cosmic hook ups. He even consults ex-girlfriend Troi about this and receives her blessing. Ultimately, Soren is discovered by her people, and after a brief trial is sentenced to a high tech lobotomy to remove her “unnatural” sense of gender so she can be “cured”.

Tragically, Riker’s attempt to rescue her is too late and we see what happens to a society that is free to enforce its oppression.

It doesn’t sound very gay, does it?

But hold on… Star Trek has always worked best as allegory. While it has been mentioned that the producers of the show evaded homosexuality with this story, giving it a veiled showcase, the episode’s more allegorical nature has actually allowed it to transcend the “gay issue” into a much more inclusive one.

Before Soren’s “deviance” is revealed, she spends time inquiring the Enterprise crew about gender roles. While the obvious physical differences are mentioned, Soren learns that treatment of gender in other ways is fair and equal. To her, the Enterprise’s happy coexistence of gender and equality is foreign but hopeful.  Many in our world may feel just as shocked as Soren is, considering still lingering inequalities between the genders in even our most progressive societies.

Soren tells Riker her secret in the privacy of a shuttle, where she is met with his understanding. Her description of a life of fear, and secrets, and hiding from persecution is all too familiar to anyone who is gay, or a racial minority, or even transgender as Soren most certainly is. When I watched Soren divulge her attraction to “maleness”, instantly I identified with her and I saw the terror and strength in her admission.

Soren’s true strength comes through when she speaks in her own defense on her home world. She proclaims her sense of gender is natural, and that all she wants is access to the same things as the rest of her kind, freedom to live with a compatible partner to share in life’s joys and support each other during its troubles.

Her rhetoric is common nowadays, with marriage equality being such a hot topic in our world. Think about twenty years ago, though. Gay people were merely struggling to be recognized as something more than the punchline of a joke, the victim of a “gay disease” that is actually a threat to us all, or as some secret to be swept out of sight and out of mind.

Marriage equality in the 90’s was as foreign to us as gender equality (or recognition, even) was for Soren.

With gender and sexuality being so intertwined, and able to be included in the entire spectrum of LGBT rights, the issues covered by this episode are now more relevant than ever.

Certainly, I was not the only child affected by this episode, who shared in Soren’s terror of the rest of her kind because of a secret truth that we couldn’t safely share. Being able to see a story that put a face to our fear gave us hope that there would be other Rikers out there to understand and love us.

The ending is tragic, yes, but it provides a staunch warning to the rest of our world.

Photo from the wonderful online Star Trek resource: memory-alpha.org
From YouTube, Soren’s speech from the channel JasonOnEarth:

Re-watch Reviews: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

It’s been over ten years since I first saw this film, and twenty years since its release. Priscilla (I’m not typing out that lengthy title again) is now considered a cult classic among many, especially among gay people, and is one among a handful of Australian films that had breakout success in and around the early nineties. It’s a fun trip, emotional, campy, disco-y, sometimes crude.

But who is this Priscilla figure, and of which desert is she queen?

What could this film be about?

Drag queens. This film is about drag queens. Two drag queens and a transsexual to be exact, and their trip across the Outback which brings them all face to face with their pasts, themselves, and their futures.

There’s Anthony “Tick”/Mitzi, whose estranged wife and son reach out to him for opportunities in both work and personal life. His fellow queen, Adam/Felicia dreams of doing some drag hiking if his youthful arrogance and impishness don’t get the best of him first. Finally, there’s Bernadette, former performer and now widow who lost her lover to an early death, and fears her life as an aging transsexual will be bereft of joy.

There road trip to the center of the world (i.e. Alice Springs, Australia, which apparently is surrounded by horrid bad lands) takes center stage, and does so with comedic flair. The whole experience is campy without being grating, and even when the humor is crude, it’s not too tasteless. The scene with ping pong balls comes to mind, and causes quite the pussy riot…

More than humor, we get a dramatic look at the pasts and motivations of the characters. These aren’t just flashy drag queen piñatas full of glitter and candy. No. These are people with pain and hopes. Fears and strengths.

Despite his confidence in make up, we see a man confront his sexuality and consolidate his private life with his estranged family. He emerges without shame and with more vigor for his career than ever. That’s Tick (Hugo Weaving).

Bernadette (Terence Stamp) is jaded, mourning her lover, and still sensitive about her former identity as a man. It’s taken her a lifetime to develop the resilience to withstand against the world’s persecution of her identity. Not only does she come alive while fending off a fearsome homophobic assailant by deftly dropping him with a knee to the groin, but she finds love in an unlikely country man.

And what of Adam (Guy Pearce)? He’s a little prick most of the movie, though a funny one, but that just makes it all the better when you see that he begins to grow up by the end of the film. He too feels shame after having been abused as a child, but figures out that he doesn’t have to be so frikin’ abrasive.

These are characters that make a movie for the ages. They’re memorable, varied, and they hit you in the heart. It doesn’t matter if they’re men, women, or something in between.

They’re human.

Much like its comedic Australian contemporaries Strictly Ballroom from ’92 and Muriel’s Wedding also from ’94, Priscilla weaves between heavy-hitting material and campy levity. While Strictly Ballroom bounces around frantically, and Muriel’s Wedding lingers a bit too long in the deep end of grave emotions for it’s comedy to keep it afloat, Priscilla masterfully balances your emotions like a queen’s good wig. It may look larger than life, but it ties the ensemble together so you can pay attention to the performance without distraction.

The film’s legacy is still a strong one. It’s main actors are all successful and respected, and the film itself has even been adapted to Broadway. I still remember seeing Hugo Weaving in the opening scene with my friends the first time, and even just watching it recently, the celebratory ending featuring music by Abba still splits my face in half with a smile.

This film takes you on a journey. Whether you find what you never expected at the end of it, or if you wind up back home happier than ever, you’re going to have a fabulous time.