“faggot”

That solitary word makes up one of the comments on Youtube for one of my video reviews. It also appears in plenty of other comments, in delightful turns of phrase such as “this guy sounds like fuckin faggot.” Never mind that the video clearly states my name as Carolyn within the first few seconds. Yes, I am a transgender woman, and okay, I certainly still have some room to improve where my voice is concerned, but really, calling me a “faggot,” which is never an acceptable word to use under any circumstances, is just wrong on so many levels. Youtube comments: You will never find a more wretched hive of idiocy and cruelty.

Once upon a time, such language would have wounded me. In fact, even very recently I couldn’t have imagined putting myself in a position where I can be so easily targeted for such comments. But now, I am too secure in my knowledge of myself and in the casual acceptance of those who matter to me most to be shaken by those who voice their own ignorance and misunderstanding. Now, it doesn’t hurt at all. It just makes me a bit sad. I am sad for those who feel this kind of hate—I believe it needs to be taught, that it’s something that’s absorbed from society (I certainly knew very early on to hide who I was, that certain expressions of self that felt natural were to be repressed and to be ashamed of). And though this commenter is still presumably quite young, escaping from the gravitational pull of such pitiable ignorance is something that only occurs in rare circumstances. There’s a very good chance that he has a life of closed-minded hatred to look forward to. It saddens me to know that he is not a rare example of prejudices we are rapidly leaving in our past, but instead is giving voice to a fear, an ignorance, a hatred that is still deeply woven through so much of our society.

But more than that, I feel sorry for those young people who encounter such ignorance, be it on the internet or in their schools, at the mall or at church, and who may internalize it, feeling that there’s something deeply wrong with them. Young people who learn from the verbal and physical lashings of their peers, or perhaps the disapproving glances or stern words of their parents, that some aspect of themselves is wrong. They will learn that it is to be denied and hidden away, curled up and caged in some remote corner of their souls, its starved cries echoing under the surface of every aspect of their lives. Yes, it gets better, and some day, if they are lucky, they will learn to set free and to embrace this part of who they are. But the scars these experiences leave may never fully heal.

For my part, I am thankful, not for the cruelty directed at me, exactly, but to be in a role where some people are brought into contact with the reality of someone like me, and though it may make some of them uncomfortable, well, the spreading of understanding and acceptance has always been a long, awkward process. And while I am unaffected by the criticisms leveled at me (except for one comment I read, “why is this reviewer sound like the dead michael jackson,” which made me laugh heartily), I am moved by the kind messages I’ve received. One was from a transgender teen in a small town, who says it’s “extremely encouraging” to see me in this public role. Another was from a young man who had just finished celebrating Transgender Awareness Week at his school, and thanked me for “representing.” It’s not something I ever set out to do or saw myself doing, nor is it something I’m consciously doing even now. I’m just being myself as I do my job, which is greatly preferable to being someone else as I do it.

There have been many more very kind, supportive comments. I’ve been touched by each and every one of them, and I am truly thankful for them.

And I am hopeful. I believe we are moving in the right direction, and that LGBT people of future generations will have an easier path. There is a strength found in freedom, in love and acceptance and honesty, that the lashings out of ignorance and hatred cannot shake.

After 28 years, Tron is finally getting a sequel.

I don’t think Tron is a great film, but it’s an important film that’s worthy of admiration for its visual and storytelling ambition. It had a profound impact on me as a child, and, I think it’s safe to say, on many members of my generation. Misunderstood at the time, it’s a surprisingly complex film for one marketed and released by Disney as a family adventure. It left parents, who weren’t prepared for a science fiction film with political and religious undertones that actually takes place inside of a computer, scratching their heads, while the children who were dragged to the film (like me) were deeply affected by it, but in ways that we wouldn’t fully understand or be able to articulate for years to come. Now, the things Tron deals with—video games, computer programmers, software companies, cyberspace—are all a much bigger part of our collective social consciousness than they were in 1982. In that sense, Tron is almost a bit prophetic, or, at least, ahead of its time.

Before seeing Tron at the age of five, I was already an avid player of video games, and while the experience of playing games has changed so dramatically in so many ways since then, in my mind one difference is more significant than all the others. In the early 80s, you had to engage your imagination while playing games. If you were going to become invested in the Atari 2600 game Adventure, you had to meet the game 98% of the way, agreeing to accept that the little dot you moved around was a brave hero and that the duck-like creatures who attacked you were fierce dragons. You created the world of the game in your mind. Today, for the most part, games are so richly detailed that you don’t have to put your imagination to work at all. It’s not unlike the difference between reading a book and seeing a film. When you read a book, you collaborate with the author in creating the movie of the book that plays in your mind. The author’s words form a basis, but you cast the parts, you do the set design, you direct the film, and the film that plays in your head is different from the film that plays in the head of any other reader of that book. With a film, we all see the same thing. With games today, all players see the same world, but in 1980, one player’s imagination may have been engaged by Adventure in very different ways from the next player’s.

The point of all this is that, when I stepped into that movie theater in 1982, I had already spent a great deal of time imagining that the actions happening on the screen when I played video games were, in some sense, real, that stuff was happening inside my Atari (or, if not there, then in some unknowable place). So when Tron showed me computer programmer and video game hotshot Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) playing an arcade game and then cut to the action “really” happening inside the machine, I was ready for it. I was thrilled by it. And although I came out of the film with only the haziest understanding of its plot, its visual style shaped how, for many years, I envisioned what was actually happening inside of computers, to the point where even when I read William Gibson’s landmark sci-fi novel Neuromancer as a teenager, Tron’s depiction of a realm of computerized information influenced how I imagined the cyberspace of his book.

The years since have tried to provide us with other cinematic cyberspace messiahs. The Matrix trilogy’s Neo, in particular, is a cinematic Christ figure for the cyberspace age. But in my own heart, nobody has ever been able to compete with Kevin Flynn. Terrific at video games. A brilliant and somewhat arrogant programmer with a rock star charisma. He’s like Bill Gates, if Bill Gates were cool. (Neo, on the other hand, doesn’t even have the charisma of Bill Gates.) And it’s no stretch to call him a messiah figure. Tron is replete with religious undertones and imagery. The relationship between users (people) and their programs is a spiritual one for the programs—when one program mentions his user, he’s called a religious nut, and Flynn, a user called down from on high, walks among the programs, for a short time, anyway.

Now that those my age, the first generation to grow up with video games as a normal part of life and who saw Tron as young people, are adults, the time has come for a sequel. (How fortunate that the actor to play Flynn wasn’t some actor who would soon be forgotten, but was Jeff Bridges, one of the very best film actors of the past 30 years.) Of course, the sequel could be terrible, but I have to admit that, when I see that they’ve taken the concept of Kevin Flynn as a messiah figure seemingly as far as it can go—in one trailer, a character calls him “the creator”—I get very excited. I hope that Legacy is the sequel Tron deserves; not just a sci-fi action spectacle, but a serious piece of cinematic mythmaking, one that may influence the next generation as much as the original influenced mine, or, at the very least, provide for me and my fellow Tron fans a rich and satisfying continuation of the story that has resonated in our minds for so long.

In the trailers, I especially love the shot of Sam, Kevin Flynn’s son, returning to Flynn’s arcade, a location bustling with life in the original film, and seeing the machines shut down, their screens covered in dust.

The era of arcades, sadly, is over.

But the era of games has only just begun.

I’ll see you on the game grid.

My video for the It Gets Better project. It really does get better. But for suffering LGBT teens, our society needs to start taking steps to make it better now. No young person should need to endure bullying, or the pain that comes from denying who you are to yourself and everyone around you.

Note: This was written for my GameSpot blog. But it represents a significant moment in both my personal and professional lives, so I am posting it here as well.

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As some of you may know, I’ve been privileged with the opportunity to freelance for GameSpot for the past few years. As a publication that I’ve read and respected for more than a decade, this has been a great honor for me.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at my latest review, which was for Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes, but this was a special review for me to write. That’s because it’s the first review I’ve written as the newest member of GameSpot’s in-house reviews team. I can’t tell you what a thrill it is for me to be here, working with Justin Calvert, Kevin VanOrd, Tom Mc Shea and Chris Watters in the offices of this site that has meant so much to me for so long.

This may seem a strange shift in topics, but it’s something that must be addressed, at least once. Those of you who have been reading my blog for many years will know this already, but it’s not something I’ve talked about often, and it’s not something I intend to talk about very often in the future. I’m not here at GameSpot to change the world or to make any kind of political statement. I’m here because I love games, I love GameSpot, and there’s nothing I’d rather be doing than busting my ass for this site. But soon I’ll start appearing in video reviews and making other appearances here and there, and this will no doubt raise some questions that need to be answered. So here goes.

I’m transgender, or as I usually prefer to say, TG. What this means is that, although I was born with a Y chromosome, in my mind, heart and soul I’ve always identified as female. The process called “transition” is, at least for me, a long, slow, expensive one, but in the meantime I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not. Being true to oneself is essential for one’s happiness. Take it from me, I know. So if this should make anyone uncomfortable, I say: I’m sorry it makes you uncomfortable. I’m not doing it to make you uncomfortable. I’m doing it because living a lie sucks, and because I’m so much happier just being honest about who I am, and not hiding it or apologizing for it or being ashamed of it. Also, with the tragic wave of bullying and suicides of LGBT teens, I don’t think this is any time for any member of the community to hide in the shadows, and I add my voice to the chorus of voices that are saying to young LGBT people in pain, “It gets better.”

Here is a goofy video I made two weeks ago, my first in years, for National Coming Out Day. If you want, you can watch this to get a glimpse of the face you’ll soon be seeing in videos on the site, and perhaps a better sense of what I mean when I say I’m TG.

So that’s it. Again, it’s not something I intend to discuss often. If you have respectful questions, feel free to ask. (I won’t tolerate or respond to hate.) I am TG but being TG is not who I am, and it’s not what I want to be known for. It’s a fact of my life but it doesn’t define me, and it’s not nearly as interesting as video games, or as working for GameSpot, which truly is a dream come true for me.

In conclusion, let me just say: Super Meat Boy is amazing. I grew up with the Atari 2600, and later, the NES, which, along with the arcades of that era, provided many games that were just pure, simple, challenging tests of skill. Super Meat Boy is like that, and it’s one of the very best of its kind, ever. Using only the simplest and most familiar elements of video games—you run and jump your way through 2D levels—it creates something that constantly finds new and surprising ways to challenge you, and the gameplay is just about perfect.

Yeah. Video games are awesome.

I don’t address this topic very often because it’s not what I want to be known for. I like to be taken at face value as the person I am, and I think this issue often just overshadows that. But I also think, particularly with the tragic wave of suicides and violence that’s happened here in the U.S. of late, that this is no time for any of us to be silent.

WARNING: This post discusses the endings of the film Inception and the game Limbo.

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The only detail in Christopher Nolan’s Inception that struck me as truly dreamlike was not an intentional one on the part of the director. Actress Marion Cotillard famously played Edith Piaf in the film La Vie En Rose, and here, the Piaf song “Non, je ne regrette rien” is featured. This struck me as the sort of association our subconscious might make while we sleep, and suggested to me that cinema might be akin to a shared societal dreamscape. On the whole, though, while I found Inception to be a fascinating mechanical puzzle, I also found it cold, lacking in both genuine human emotion and in a willingness to embrace the full potential of the concept of dreams, presenting dreams that seem much more like levels from a richly detailed but sterile video game than from anything I ever encounter while sleeping.

In another bit of purely unintentional cultural intersection, the term “Limbo” is very important in Inception, referring to a state of pure subconscious, and it is also the title of an exceptional new game which creates an experience that’s infinitely more dreamlike than anything in Inception.

One thing Inception gets right about dreams is the idea that we just find ourselves in them, never really knowing or stopping to think about how we got there. In Limbo, you find yourself in a forest; spooky, hazy, geographically only somewhat defined, a far cry from the elegant precision of Inception’s dreamstates. As you press on, the landscape slowly shifts and you encounter new areas and obstacles, all with a simple, dreamlike iconography to them—boats to cross little pools of water, shadowy, malevolent figures, terrifying spiders. The simple but beautiful visuals and the sound, creating moods with menacing tones but rarely if ever forming into what most of us might call music, create a kind of reverie. Each time the boy dies, it shocks me awake, Inception-like, but immediately I’m transported back to the dreamworld of the game.

Never in my journey through Limbo did I find anything as symbolically straightforward as an elevator down into the deeper levels of the mind, or some documents locked in a safe. And I found its ending—which I thought was perfect—shared a surprising parallel with that of Inception, leaving the same questions open at the moment of being reunited with loved ones: Is this moment real, or still a dream? And does it matter?

It’s about survival.

“It’s not a deal nor a test nor a love of something fated.”

“It’s out there most days and nights, but only a fool would complain.”