#zettel #gaming #gender sourced from: [[Pokemon Y]] and a conversation with my friend [[Exclamatia]] # The Character Customization in [[Pokemon X]] and Y Offered Opportunities for Gender Exploration My friend exclamatia told that she was able to explore her own gender by using the character customization options for female characters while she was still identifying as male. This is something that is provided more by X and Y then any others because of the multitudinous opportunities there. It's not that the male character customizations are bad, it's more that this might have been the first game for a lot of pre-hatched transgender people to realize that they might actually be transgender. I have to assume that this was the for a lot of genderqueer folks who weren't afforded the chance to explore their gender expression. ## Related Thought - There were other games too beyond Pokemon that were ones she played. This included [[Style Savvy Trendsetters]] and [[Animal Crossing New Leaf]]. There were a lot of option to explore outfits and designs that alklowed her to explore dressing up in a safe space before coming out. - Character customizations probably offered a lot of opportunities for transgender and genderqueer folks to explore their identities without the judgement of others - I remember the jokes about eggs playing as the girl because "why would I want to look at a boy for the whole playthrough?" - To what extent is the player character an extension of the player? In Pokemon it's definitely MEANT to be.