Hello! Eurogamer is once again marking Pride with another week of features celebrating the intersection of LGBTQIA+ culture and gaming in all its guises. Today, Sharang Biswas explores the allure of the monstrous, from Mediterranea Inferno to Baldur’s Gate 3.
One bright Thursday morning, I walked into class and asked my NYU graduate students what they’d thought of the movie I’d recently assigned, FW Murnau’s classic 1920’s German silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. Within nary a heartbeat, one of my gay students looked me straight in the eyes and declared, “Count Orlok is hot!”
This wasn’t a wholly unexpected response. The queer attraction to monstrosity has long been a recurring topic of academic discourse. In 2021, in this very series of Pride-themed articles, Dr Lloyd (Meadhbh) Houston discussed – paying particular attention to Resident Evil Village’s beloved and gigantic Lady Dimitrescu – how queer folks reframe, recontextualize, and reconstruct monsters in media in order to find characters with whom to identify. The shadowy Babadook and murderous clown Pennywise, for example, both briefly enjoyed the status of queer icons.
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