The problem is that who I am-my fat cis gay male body-was never a part of this buffet of images. They gave me a very clear message: this is what being gay means. And because I was newly minted, confused about what being gay even meant, these were everything I wanted. They “should” be muscular, thin but not too thin, hairy but not too hairy, with ample dicks, and offered up for regular servings of sex, the apparent raison d’être of the gay male body. When I was 18 and renting those Euro softcore movies from Four Star, they were giving me something similar to what I get out of Coming Out on Top: a slice of our mainstream vision of what gay male bodies are and should be like. I would be more okay with these played out tropes and body politics if they were not a perfect representation of the content I was consuming as a baby gay back in 1996. Romancing Alex, your anatomy professor (oy) involves not just a Very Typical Sex Dream but also a pretty bog standard “we musn’t… we must!. Romancing Brad involves dealing with the religious closeted jock situation.
![coming out on top gay dating sim game coming out on top gay dating sim game](https://i1.ytimg.com/vi/FVG3mYLmmZo/sddefault.jpg)
Romancing Phil the USMC cadet involves two violently homophobic fellow soldiers, including one who embodies perhaps my least favorite gay story trope, the “closet gay whose vicious homophobia hides his secret desires” which is played for laughs. While the story has a number of branches, twists and turns (including one bizarre gag reel ending about becoming a delusional slave to your pet goldfish), in general the various paths play out in expected ways. It goes smoothly, and the game involves Mark’s life until graduation, juggling his studies, his relationship with his friends and his-let’s be clear-unabashed and all-consuming journey to get laid.Ĭoming Out is a pretty traditional text-and-still-art dating sim, with five main “routes,” one for each potential love interest: Alex the hot professor, Brad the partying jock, Jed the rock musician, Phil the Marine, and Ian the goofy roommate. The game is the story of a college senior, a white gay guy with the default name “Mark Matthews.” Mark is in his final semester of college and, after being closeted for many years, decides to come out, starting with his roommates. While it’s nice to see someone making and aggressively marketing a gay dating sim unafraid to tackle sexuality, particularly sexualizing gay men’s bodies, Coming Out remains mired in an ancient and damaging vision of what those bodies are. Queer media are way more prolific now than they were then, though we’ve a ways to go with including more than just the “L” and the “G” in “LGBTQ.” Yet while I played Coming Out on Top, a gay dating sim from Obscurasoft released in December 2014, I was transported right back to 1996, and not in a good way.
![coming out on top gay dating sim game coming out on top gay dating sim game](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39256937/b212e22d553bcf5055b18069416caea0937822ee.png)
Lord, did I watch a lot of it: an endless parade of smooth, European (white) twinks having deeply emotional silences while they stared at each other for a while and then fucked.īut it’s not 1996 anymore.
![coming out on top gay dating sim game coming out on top gay dating sim game](https://i.imgur.com/JdCxuZA.jpg)
Seeing gays and lesbians in the mainstream media was still a rarity, and other parts of the queer spectrum were basically invisible.įour Star had a nickname on campus: “Porn Star Video.” The reason for this, other than having a literal porn section (which… who cares?) was that they also had a more innocuously-named “International” section where an enterprising young queer could find softcare Euro porn. This was before Will and Grace, before In & Out (the movie, not the burger). At that point in my life, the only “gay media” that I had consumed regularly were Absolutely Fabulous on Comedy Central and watching DiC’s Sailor Moon dub every morning before school. While I had been out of the closet for two years at that point, college meant hassle-free time and space to watch and enjoy whatever I liked.Īnd I had a hunger, believe me. Back in the day, when I was too broke to have a DVD player of my own and Netflix was years away, the renting of VHS tapes on the regular was a key thing for me. As a college freshman at the University of Wisconsin in 1996, I was fortunate enough to have access to a video rental place called Four Star Video Heaven.