I Chose They/Them and Everything Changed

I’ve known Josh since the Xbox 360 days, back when voice chat was all static and our friendship was built across pixels and time zones. We met around 2006, and over the years we’ve made dozens of characters together. Phantasy Star Universe, Final Fantasy XIV, and too many other games to name. Our avatars have changed, but the rhythm stayed the same: create someone new, dive into a world, lose hours laughing and exploring together. And for me, every character creation screen came with its own quiet split.

There was always this dividing line in my head: would I play a male character or a female one? Early on, the answer was always female. Male characters never appealed to me. They felt stiff, blunt, like I was wearing a coat two sizes too big. I gravitated toward girlhood in games, not necessarily because I saw myself as a girl, but because something about femininity gave me room to breathe. I’d sit alone in my room and play to the soundtrack of early 2000s empowerment anthems. Britney Spears’ “Stronger” was on repeat.

Online games became a kind of escape hatch. I could be soft there. I could explore a version of myself I didn’t have words for yet. But even when I played female characters, it never felt like the full picture. I started overcompensating, leaning into hyperfemininity: long hair, soft voices, delicate gestures. My Final Fantasy X replays definitely didn’t help. I idolized Yuna so much that I started folding my own personality into that kind of gentle grace. I thought that to be feminine meant to be quiet, kind, selfless. And if I couldn’t be that in real life, maybe I could be it through a controller.

Around 2012, something changed. I started seeing myself in games more clearly, or at least more complicatedly. I dropped the feminine personas and began playing as a character named Serenity, my first male avatar that didn’t feel like a performance. Serenity showed up in Mass Effect 3, right around the time gay romance options were finally part of the default experience. He became my go-to for Dragon Age II, Inquisition, and Mass Effect: Andromeda. Queer masculinity felt comfortable. It gave me a home in games without asking me to contort too much. But it still had limits. The farther I leaned into “male,” the more I felt that old tension return, that pressure to perform a kind of straight-coded strength.

That’s when I created Serenity Hart in Final Fantasy XIV. A dark-skinned Lalafell with an androgynous presentation, Serenity was soft and radiant and mine. I dressed him in gowns, miniskirts, and sometimes in full cosplay of Aerith from Final Fantasy VII. Square Enix’s slow move toward gender inclusivity (allowing male characters to wear dresses, letting fashion be liberated) gave me permission I didn’t realize I needed. Serenity wasn’t me pretending to be someone else. He was the closest I’d ever gotten to just being myself.

That self became more visible when I came out as queer and started using he/they pronouns. It happened in a reflective essay for a teacher academy class, a quiet coming-out on a Word doc that felt bigger than anything I’d said out loud. The class was led by a genderqueer professor, and for the first time in my professional life, I felt safe enough to admit who I was.

And then came Baldur’s Gate III.

Josh and I were starting a new campaign together online, of course, since we live in different places now, but it still felt like slipping into something familiar. We knew how this worked. We’d make characters, pick a story path, and probably play for hundreds of hours. What I didn’t expect was the moment at the Origin screen, when I toggled through the body options, chose a masculine frame, and saw “Non-binary/Other” appear in the gender selection.

I stared at it. Just sat with it for a second.

I hadn’t known the game included nonbinary characters. I already knew queer identity was present; Larian had made that clear. But seeing “nonbinary” not as a hidden flag or an afterthought, but as a visible, intentional choice? That hit different. I felt my hand pause over the controller. I thought about how often I’d been quiet about this part of myself at work. How I’d heard coworkers mock another nonbinary teacher. How I’d watched queer educators be punished just for existing. I’d learned how to play it safe.

But I wasn’t at work. I was in a game. With a friend who’d known me through every character I’d ever created. And in that moment, I chose nonbinary. I clicked the button, took a breath, and stepped into the world.

Zevlor was in the middle of a heated argument the first time it happened. A tiefling leader shouting over the din of a crumbling world, speaking in hard lines and desperation. And then, in the middle of it all, he called me “they.” Not in passing. Not awkwardly. Just plainly. He called me a hero.

That moment landed with more force than most spells ever could. I’ve been the hero of countless lands before, the chosen one in dozens of stories. But I had never been a Black nonbinary hero. Not like this. Not in the game that everyone was playing. Not in a world that reflected my identity so clearly and so quietly. There wasn’t a spotlight on it. No narrative arc about gender discovery. No companion asking questions or side-eyeing me. The game treated my identity as normal, and that meant everything.

Every time someone in the world referred to me as they, it reinforced something I’d been afraid to ask for in most games: dignity without compromise. The villains didn’t misgender me. My party didn’t tiptoe around me. The issue was never who I was, it was the evil we were all trying to defeat. And there, in the middle of all of it, was my paladin. Righteous. Reluctant. Steady. Moving forward even when I wasn’t sure of the way.

Josh was always right there beside me, guiding or teasing or nudging me onward when I got stuck. His Dark Urge romanced Wyll, and I spent a good part of the story unsure who, if anyone, I wanted to romance. I’d played through love stories before (Kaidan in Mass Effect 3, Anders in Dragon Age II) but this time felt different. I wasn’t chasing representation. I wasn’t bracing for that awkward line of “I don’t normally do this, but…” from a romance option. I was just moving through the world, existing, until I found myself circling Halsin.

Halsin’s flirtation started early, but it stayed light. He responded to my teasing with warmth, never pushing, just smiling and promising there were plenty more nights of flirtation ahead. It was playful, a slow orbit. I didn’t expect it to grow. But in Act 3, everything changed. He asked if I wanted to slip away with him, his voice quiet and sincere. That’s when the romance began in earnest. It felt like something was being celebrated. I paused between fights just to kiss him at camp. I needed that moment of softness. I needed the joy. I clapped. I grinned. I fangirled. There was no shame in it.

Playing as a paladin felt like the right choice too. Not just because I led the party, but because I’ve spent years leading in other spaces. In my classroom, I am both protector and guide. Firm but nurturing. I carry my students through lessons the same way my paladin carried our group through battles: not always confidently, but always forward. I found myself slipping into flow—one of those rare states where life and art synchronize, where what I’m doing in the game echoes how I move through the world.

After we finished our playthrough (around four hundred hours, easily) I couldn’t let go. I started a solo run. And then another. I joked that I was stuck in Larian Hell, and it was true. I didn’t touch another game for nearly seven months. Nothing else could hold me the way this game had. Because it hadn’t just told me a story. It had given me a place.

Baldur’s Gate III opened the door to something I’d never experienced before. But it was only the beginning. Dragon Age: The Veilguard didn’t just walk through the door Baldur’s Gate opened; it built a world on the other side. And suddenly, I couldn’t imagine settling for less.

To say I was looking forward to the game would be an understatement. Dragon Age: Inquisition is one of my all-time favorites, and I’ve replayed it nearly every year since it came out. Dorian became my flagship romance. It was one of the first times I saw a queer man treated with real narrative weight, and I clung to that. But after nearly a decade, I needed more. Baldur’s Gate III had raised the bar for how identity and queerness could be honored in character creation and story, and I was hopeful that The Veilguard might go even further.

So when I learned that The Veilguard was being directed by Corinne Busche, a trans woman, and that representation would be at the forefront, I felt something crack open in me. It felt like the future of RPGs was not only arriving, but arriving with purpose, in plain view.

Then the backlash came.

Before the debate reached me, the press was already highlighting what I felt before playing. The Veilguard earned praise for its nuanced romance options, its embrace of gender-diverse identities, and the way its character creator poured life into queer experience. It received GLAAD’s Outstanding Video Game award, and queer spaces like the Gayming Awards crowned it Game of the Year.

Social media started flooding me with everything at once. There was support, yes, but also cruelty that hit fast and hard. Taash’s face became a punchline. Their open-mouthed portrait was posted again and again, ripped from the game and turned into a meme. The criticism wasn’t just from trolls either.

Some players said the writing felt too much like a crash course in gender identity, a little too “Nonbinary 101.” And I’ll admit, there’s some truth in that. The way Taash talks about who they are feels more rooted in our world than the one they live in. It lacks some of the strange beauty I usually come to fantasy for. But at the same time, it’s rare to see that kind of clarity and openness in a game at all. Taash may not be perfect, but they’re proof that this can be done. That we can have nonbinary characters front and center. That we can start here and go deeper.

The fear came creeping in.

Not just fear for Taash, or the game, or even for BioWare. But for me. I thought about my job. I thought about the other nonbinary teacher at my school and how coworkers talked about them behind closed doors. I thought about the emails parents could send. About what it would mean to be “found out,” and not in a tender, affirming way. What if I became a “Taash”? A symbol of everything people wanted to mock or erase? What if my name ended up in the wrong forum? What if my queerness stopped being quiet and safe and instead became something that got me fired?

I logged off social media more and more. I tried not to look when people called The Veilguard a joke or a failure. I focused on the game.

I played nonstop from late October through the end of the year. The Veilguard lets you choose a body type and then separately pick your gender identity and pronouns, and I created an elf with a penis whose gender identity was nonbinary. Baldur’s Gate III did a good job offering nonbinary character options and decoupling voice from pronouns, but The Veilguard pushed things even further. You can also give your character top surgery scars. It felt like a quiet evolution in how games approach gender, one I hope other developers build on. When my character had dialogue that reflected their identity, especially in conversations with Taash, it didn’t feel like a feature. It felt like the game knew I was there.

Taash, raised by a Qunari historian mother who left Par Vollen to protect them from conscription, was caught between worlds. They weren’t quite at home in Rivaini culture either. Their story was about belonging and uncertainty. During one of their story arcs, they turned to me and asked how I understood my own identity. It wasn’t just a question for my Rook; it felt like a student asking me for guidance. And I’d been asked those questions before. In real life. In my classroom. Quietly, haltingly, by queer kids looking for someone who’d understand.

In that moment, Taash wasn’t just a character. They were a mirror. And my character, this spell-wielding, morally-driven nonbinary elf, was the kind of mentor I wanted to be in the real world. Someone who didn’t flinch when asked to speak openly. Someone who offered kindness without compromise.

The world outside the game didn’t feel nearly as kind. As political tensions rose in the real world, so did the fear in my classroom. Many of my students are bilingual and from immigrant families, and as the 2025 election loomed, they started asking me questions I didn’t know how to answer. Questions about deportation, about rights, about whether they’d be safe if certain people got elected. And while I couldn’t promise them everything would be okay, I could promise to show up. I could hold space. I could be steady.

And that’s what I was trying to be for myself too.

I pushed through The Veilguard with purpose. I needed it to be a bookend, a marker in time. I raced to finish my second playthrough by January 1st. I platinumed it on PlayStation 5. I wanted this game (not the discourse, not the layoffs, not the hate) to be what defined the start of my year. I wanted it to be the thing I carried forward.

Loving The Veilguard felt like an act of defiance. The game reached over 1.5 million players within two months of its October 2024 launch, but that wasn’t enough for EA. Corinne Busche left the studio. Trick Weekes, the nonbinary lead writer responsible for Taash, was also laid off with the rest of BioWare’s Dragon Age team, shifting focus toward Mass Effect 5.

For some, The Veilguard became shorthand for failure. But I still see it as something rare. Loving it felt like standing with the people who made it. It felt like honoring Trick, and what their work gave me. What The Veilguard gave me, what Taash gave me, can’t be taken back. And even if the rest of the world laughed, I know what it meant. I was there.