On sapphic rep in "Lost Records: Bloom and Rage"
Online, I constantly see Lost Records and games like it getting dunked on for daring to represent anybody other than the cishet white man majority. People were clowning on the original LiS and calling it "SJW garbage" back in 2015, but between our recent global political climate and the rise of violent hate crimes against marginalized populations, it's not as easy nowadays to handwave them off as baseless complaints.
That's why it's still a big deal that we have Dontnod out here self-publishing a game about four unambiguously queer women who meet and spend an unforgettable summer together. A game that they want to turn into a new franchise, and they start with the supposedly "harder to market" demographics instead of playing it safe and diversifying after a successful first entry. It's a big deal that DN intentionally centered these four girls and their relationships with each other, away from school and judgmental eyes-- aka, away from the culture of '90s Midwestern homphobia, as much as possible. Their little paradise in the secluded, impossibly beautiful Michigan woods and talks of running away are clearly evoking common queer tropes of secrecy and escape, but the difference is they are so damn happy when they are alone together.
The romances are adorable, but it's obvious how much having genuine friends means to all of them, but Swann and Kat especially. This is a game that truly celebrates female friendship and subverts the cliched cattiness, gossip, and petty drama. If you choose to have Swann admit she's afraid of being unlovable, Kat will simply respond, "We love you." Their platonic bonds don't invalidate their possible romantic feelings, but provide a solid foundation of love and companionship for it instead. Their queerness feels believable because male characters are simply irrelevant to their personal lives. Even in BtS, with two women staff writers, Eliot was still shoehorned in as a Warren clone (except even creepier??) to convince Chloe that Rachel was manipulative.
In Lost Records, these girls are written like any other ordinary teenagers, not eye candy for the implicit male gamer gaze. When they ran down to the lake, I was actually worried we'd get some needless fanservice of the girls stripping to swim in their underwear like in LiS1 episode 3, but nope, there's a cut and the narrative just implies they went swimming off camera in their swimsuits. They complain and chat openly about their periods, they make gross jokes, they giggle about "mating squirrels," they have acne and insecurities, they get excited about each other's ideas, they're ride or die-- because they're teenage girls.
I have to shout out the two women on DN Montreal's writing team-- Desiree Cifre and Nina Freeman, because I was so excited when I found out that women helped write this game. In short, DN deserves their flowers! Please support this game!
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