Little Monday Presents: Baldur's Gate III and the Queer Politics of Monstrosity.

Laura Westengard writes of the "ongoing battle of purposes" in Gothic media between queer representation and neoliberal assimilation. Perhaps as much as any other conflict in the game, this battle of purposes plays out in the game's writing with its emphasis on post-queer visibility, while also policing the boundaries of an acceptable neoliberal status quo. In my conclusion, I examine this conflic...

We finally seek to resolve the central conflict of the game: Will you become a monster if it would save the world? But perhaps more importantly, what does it mean to transform into the very thing you sought to avoid becoming? And what does crossing the boundary into monstrosity reveal of the monster that's protected you since your fall from the Nautiloid? In part five, we take a close look at the...

"May you discover the enlivening power of darkness within yourself." – Susan Stryker. In her monologue "My Words to Victor Frankenstein," Stryker harnesses her rage as a transgender woman to redefine the monstrous and deprivilege the natural. In part four, we examine the subversive power of the Emperor's monstrosity through the lens of Stryker's monologue, and what it reveals of the efforts and in...

"The beauty of the dream vanished" – or rather, the Guardian that came to us in our dreams. In its place? The Emperor. In part three, we come face-to-face with Rigby's concept of "Queer Gothic Recognition" just as we come face-to-face with our true Guardian. As the dream vanishes, paranoia takes its place, and we examine the connection between the Emperor's monstrosity and the coded language of qu...

"Frightful must it be… for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world." – Mary Shelley Building on a philosophy that privileges the natural, part two examines the relationship of the natural to the moral and the unnatural to the profane. We explore how death, desire, and the destruction of the family unit meet in the G...

In part one of this essay, I examine how the medium of a computer role playing game shapes our experience of the narrative's gothic elements from our perspective as a player, a player character, and the creator of our enigmatic Dream Guardian. I also introduce the role of scientific technology in framing our understanding of the natural versus the unnatural.    Citation Time Stamps   0:23 Halberst...

In 1818, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, a seminal work of science fiction and Gothic horror that is as relevant today as it was two-hundred years ago. To better understand the nature of the monstrous in Baldur's Gate 3, I want to begin by laying the groundwork of Shelley's "hideous progeny" – as she once called it – her most famous novel, and the monstrous creation within.  Citation Time Sta...

Would you become a monster if it would save the world? That is the central conflict of Baldur's Gate 3, a three-act epic fantasy that continues the story of the critically acclaimed series, bringing a new threat to the city of Baldur's Gate in the form of an illithid invasion. We, the player character, find ourselves infected with an illithid parasite and must unravel the source of the parasite's...