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Queer Narrative in Gone Home

In the world of video games, it is rare to find a character that is not straight; it is even rarer to
find a queer female character that is treated with dignity by the narrative. Gone Home gives both
in Sam, a gay teenage girl from 1995. As a player progresses through the game, they are led to
believe that something tragic has happened to Sam, in keeping with the usual narrative seen with
queer characters. Instead, Gone Home purposefully subverts the audiences expectations for a
queer narrative.
There is a notable trend in media where any non-heterosexual character is killed off by the
end of the story. In older works the subtext is often punishment, while in more contemporary
works the characters are painted as tragic. In Revisiting Vito Russos The Celluloid Closet,
Jane Campbell and Theresa Carilli say that while these films might seem to increase queer
visibility, they impede that visibility by presenting gay characters as victims or villains (42). A
perfect example given here is Brokeback Mountain, which despite showing the agony of being
closeted displays that the tragic ending is still often the consequence of visibility in
contemporary films about lesbians and gay men (48).
However, in her book Feeling Backward, Heather love disagrees that this is inherently
problematic. She says that while the history of Western representation is littered with the
corpses of gender and sexual deviants(1), such tragic, tear-soaked accounts of same-sex desire
compel readers in a way that brighter stories of liberation do not (3). Love says that these
feelings of discrimination and violence are part of the queer identity and history, and that the
feeling of a need for constant political progress can make it difficult to determine how queerness
is linked to loss. It should be noted, though, that this is more applicable to works by queer

writers, and less so to works like Brokeback Mountain, which is based on a short story by a
heterosexual woman.
This is the media landscape that Gone Home places itself into. The tone for most of the game
is bittersweet, a high school romance between two girls that is tinged by the knowledge that
Lonnie will be leaving for the military after graduation. The house is scattered with the artifacts
of Sam and Lonnies relationship, including things like school disciplinary forms after Sams
locker is vandalized with what are implied to be gay slurs. The player also learns that Sams
parents are dismissive of her sexuality. The whole story seems to be leading up to a tragedy, as
what exactly is in the attic hangs over the player. As Sams journal talks about going up to the
attic to wait, the audience is led to believe that she has committed suicide since she and Lonnie
cannot be together. Instead, the player finally gets to the attic only to learn that the ending is
actually hopeful, as Sam and Lonnie run away together. The game subverts the expectations of a
typical queer narrative, in order to give its queer main character a happy ending instead.
Of course, it is relatively simple to say that a work plays with its audiences expectations, but
why it is important is somewhat more complicated. Gone Home strikes a balance between the
ideas of Campbell, Carilli, and Love by incorporating the compelling feelings of pain and loss
while avoiding the problematic aspects of having the queer character die at the end, giving the
game the best of both worlds. The question of why the creators of the game would bother has to
be considered. Given that Gone Home is what is considered an indie game, made by a small
company, it is likely that this choice was made in order to make somewhat of a political
statement. M. Keith Booker states that literature can serve legitimate and useful purposes that
go far beyond mere entertainment (4). This applies not only to literature but to all forms of
entertainment media. In video game culture, with its deeply-ingrained sexism and homophobia,

creating a young, queer main character immediately stands out. However, Booker also says that
the most transgressive works of literature do not in general send their readers into the streets
carrying banners and shouting slogans. Transgressive literature works more subtly, by gradually
chipping away at certain modes of thinking that contribute to the perpetuation of oppressive
political structures (4). Whether purposeful or not, the ending to Gone Home contributes to the
chipping away of these power structures.
While working within established literary trends and devices can produce a perfectly good
story, playing with and subverting the expectations of established narratives can also be
important. In the case of Gone Home, the subverting of audience expectations for a typical queer
narrative avoids the problematic aspects of mainstream media trope and works away at
heterosexual power structures, while allowing for the drama and sadness that is still a part of the
queer experience.

Works Cited
Booker, M. Keith. "Is Literary Transgression Stupid Stuff?" Introduction. Techniques of
..Subversion in Modern Literature: Transgression, Abjection, and the Carnivalesque.
..Gainesville: U of Florida, 1991. 1-19. Google Books. Web. 1 Apr. 2015.

Campbell, Jane, and Theresa Carilli. "Revisiting Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet." Queer
..Media Images: LGBT Perspectives. Lanham: Lexington, 2013. 41-53. Google Books. Web.
..30 Mar. 2015.
Love, Heather. Introduction. Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History.
..Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. 1-31. Google Books. Web. 30 March 2015.

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