Cole Crawford (They/Them), senior writing and history double major from McKinney, Texas
It was once the scourge of the seventies and eighties, denounced by born-again Christians around the country for “promoting devil worship,” practiced only in secret to avoid the malice of jocks and escape the label of “freak;” it was Dungeons and Dragons. And what forty to fifty years ago was the perceived equivalent of Anton LaVey coming to your house to sacrifice your child to Moloch has become an accepted passtime practiced by people of all ages, beliefs, genders, sexualities, and races. This is undoubtedly due to the massive amounts of positive attention the tabletop game got from popular media like Netflix’s Stranger Things and from A-list celebrities such as Vin Diesel. These things not only brought the game into the public eye, this time positively unlike a few decades ago, but garnered appeal from people who would normally fall outside of the game’s target audience: fantasy-enthralled nerds.
Why am I saying all of this? Well, because I am one of those fantasy-enthralled nerds, and not to sound elitist, but I started playing Dungeons and Dragons back in 2018 not due to the popular media influence, but from my own desire for a tabletop game I could play with my friends on a Friday night after school. Yet, I bring up D&D’s rise in mainstream popularity for a very good reason: the widening demographic I previously mentioned. Many people in the LGBTQ+ community have found themselves enthralled by the game, as D&D offers not only a creative medium for expression, but also an escape from reality, where many of us are scorned for our existence. In that regard, I bet Dungeons and Dragons has saved many queer souls, but the game did so for me in an almost backwards sort of way. D&D didn’t just save my queer soul, it taught me that I had one.
Dungeons and Dragons is about roleplaying as a group of intrepid individuals on a quest of some ilk, as constructed by the game master. As the character you play is created entirely by you, the quirkiness and complexity of said character is only limited by one’s own imagination. When reflecting on the several characters I have created and played as over the years, a stark pattern emerges in my creativity: all but one of said characters are female or non-binary. Today, I proudly wear the colors of a non-binary and transgender person, but four years ago, I had only come to realize this fact in my subconscious, something that would change through my exposure to the game and the principal method by which my queer soul was saved: gender affirmation.
Gender affirmation is the opposite of gender dysphoria- where one feels their gender expression and/or identity affirmed by the world around them, bringing about euphoria. Through the choices I made when creating my characters, I, at first unknowingly, allowed gender affirmation into my life. By playing as female and non-binary characters, my friends, in pursuit of staying in character, would refer to me as such, using feminine and neutral pronouns when addressing me. It allowed me to undertake vocal training without it seeming out of place and without being judged for it, as it was seemingly just a means of getting into character, much like a method actor. It allowed me to express my artistic side through drawings of my characters, who I placed myself into, affirming my gender identity through the physical manifestation of an image of that aspect. All of these things actually helped me realize my queerness, and once I had, provided infinite euphoria from its fruits.
In a setting where playing a character of a supposedly different gender isn’t seen as strange, nor outwardly outed me as a non-binary and trans person before I was comfortable sharing said fact, I was able to nurture my queerness naturally yet privately, though all the while with the gender affirmation from my peers through in-character interaction. For many like me, and for many unlike me, I believe that D&D offers the best creative medium for exploring one’s self and the inner workings of their mind. It is an engine that runs on the fuel of passion and creativity, which happened to explain to me the things I was feeling in my heart and soul in a way I could easily comprehend: nerdy fantasy.
A special thanks to Lilyca Avaburn, Hugo Althaeus, Chrys Palemoon, and Estrid Fael- the characters I have played over the years, for teaching me who I was and for saving my queer soul.