In this essay, writer Ana Diaz examines the Final Fantasy video games and how they helped her understand her partner's identity, and her own.
When my partner of seven years began coming out as trans, I became a ball of nerves. We started dating at 20 years old and proceeded to build our lives together. We shared an apartment, traveled with each other’s families, and eventually adopted a cat. We faced life’s challenges, including a pandemic and grad school, and figured out how to support each other through it all. We grew up together, and to me, my partner felt more like family and less like just a girlfriend. After she came out, though, I worried about where we’d go from that point—and I worried about my own sexuality too. I thought of myself as bisexual, but I didn’t have much experience, and I’d never dated a woman.
At the time, we lived in Minnesota, and the muggy summer there was in full swing. I lay on sticky, humidity-dampened sheets, tossing and turning my way through several days. Would we be able to make it? Would I still be attracted to my partner after she transitioned? How would our families respond? My anxieties started to take over.
I was nervous about coming out to family members, and concerned about standing out as a queer couple in public places. As a bisexual woman in a seemingly straight relationship of many years, I had been labeled as straight by other queer people, and I kind of felt like a fake. On top of that, I was scared I would lose the attraction I felt to my partner.
Originally, it was my partner’s more stereotypically masculine traits that drew me to her, so I wasn't sure I would also be attracted to her femme side. It got to a point where just thinking about all these questions felt overwhelming, so I responded as any reasonable person would: I picked up Final Fantasy.
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You might assume from the name that Final Fantasy games are about, well, fantasy. And it’s true: This popular RPG series does have mystical creatures, magic, and more; however, the games I play and love—Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth—are much, much more than that.
These two games follow the story of Cloud Strife, who is known for his signature, spikey blond hair. The story takes off when he, an ex-member of a corporate-run military army, joins a ragtag group of ecoterrorists called Avalanche. Today, six years after Final Fantasy launched, its political themes—such as class issues, environmentalism, and the extractive nature of capitalism—are as relevant as ever. But for me, the characters are what make the game special.
Although I didn’t start out as a superfan, I quickly became obsessed with Cloud and the world around him. In the past, playing Final Fantasy VII Remake gave me “brain worms” and provided some relief during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. I habitually recorded clips where I thought the characters looked cute. I watched fan edits, looked at pretty fan art, and read fanfic. For me, it was an all-encompassing experience, and I welcomed the distractions from my real-life worries as I dove into the game’s industrial world.
Amid my anxieties about my relationship and how to be a supportive partner, I again returned to that world for some distraction, replaying Final Fantasy VII Remake; I also enjoyed its sequel, Rebirth, for the first time. I allowed my fangirl brain to obsess over all the characters the way I had before. I took screenshots, looked at fan art, and discussed the game online.
This time, though, new questions and observations came up as I started to relate to the characters in a different context. I soon realized that the game allowed me to gradually reflect on—and deconstruct, to an extent—my previous preconceived notions of attraction that prevented me from experiencing the joy of having a trans partner.
In this glittering, fantastical game world, the most powerful men subvert gender norms and wear dramatic styles inspired by Y2K fashion. Characters like Rufus rock a pristine white overcoat that, to me, resemble a dress that emphasizes his feminine, hourglass-like figure. The oh-so-beautiful villain Sephiroth is as alluring as he is menacing. His flowing silver hair, soft features, and cat-like eyes seem to embody a feminine beauty; I have watched his edits again and again. And as I watch Tifa and Aerith, two young women who give black cat and golden retriever vibes, playfully tease each other in cutscenes, I think more about how I wasn’t attracted to just Cloud, but also to his female companions.
During this time in my life, whenever I saw a Final Fantasy character, I would relate them to my own sexuality pretty explicitly in my thoughts. There were multiple times when I told myself, Okay, these characters are hot. If I can find these women hot—and other gender-bending characters that exist somewhere outside the norm of what I’ve been told to be attracted to—then maybe I will be attracted to my partner after she transitions.
I had only ever seen my sexuality as something theoretical, not something real or physical. Previously, my sense of bisexuality had either been ignored or relegated to digital spaces. When it became physical, and when my partner came out, it became real, and I had to face it in a new way. I was bisexual all along, but I actually had to legitimize my own identity.
Ironically, that legitimacy came by way of digital spaces. I read MLM fanfic about Final Fantasy characters like Reno and Rude, and I indulged in sultry NSFW fan art. I would stare at fan art that emphasized, say, the more typically feminine chest on a man like Reno, and also art that depicted Tifa as being super buff and strong. That, combined with a queering of how I saw these characters, helped me piece together my changing sense of self as my partner began her transition.
All of this enabled me to process the impending change in my personal life in a more low-pressure way. Thinking about my attraction to characters didn’t threaten my relationship with my partner, so I didn’t fall into an anxious spiral; rather, it gave me the room I needed to play with a sense of self that was free from the worries of day-to-day life—and I began to process my own sexuality in a more intentional way.
My partner and I live in a country that culturally vilifies trans people and systematically targets them using the state apparatus. There is very little systemic support for trans people, and the same is true for their partners. After my loved one came out, some people close to us cut us off from their lives, and I struggled to get the support I needed. Even the care of a therapist could go only so far, because my provider and I couldn’t find support groups in my state or region for the partners of trans people. It was an isolating experience, and video games became a vital lifeline for me to process my queerness.
This is especially the case with one specific scene in Final Fantasy VII Remake that captured my heart. As its name implies, Final Fantasy VII Remake is actually a modern adaptation of the RPG with the same name, Final Fantasy VII, which was first released in 1996. In the original game, there is a scene where Cloud wears a dress in order to infiltrate a mob-like organization and save a friend. In the older version, some of the locals sneer at Cloud as he looks for a wig and a dress; it’s a sad, dated part of the story. But for Final Fantasy VII Remake, the development team completely rewrote this section, transforming it into a grand celebration.
In the modern version I’ve played, Cloud performs a dance number to earn the affections of a fabulous hotel-bar operator named Andrea Rhodea. Although the wannabe macho-man Cloud hems and haws before the performance, he eventually overcomes enough of his awkwardness to dazzle a crowd with his dance moves in a cabaret-style number. At the end of the scene, Andrea and a swarm of women surround Cloud, and do a big reveal so the crowd can see Cloud wearing a dress and makeup. Andrea looks at Cloud and says to him, “True beauty is an expression of the heart. A thing without shame, to which notions of gender don’t apply.”
These days I’m much less afraid of the unknown and not as reliant on Final Fantasy for support. But my love of Final Fantasy VII Remake showed me how video games can transform a person’s life for the better—and the limits of that kind of representation, which is still very narrow. As far as body types go, most Final Fantasy characters are incredibly thin, and the game features a lot of feminine men who still fit into other beauty norms and could moonlight as pop stars. On top of that, there aren’t a whole lot of brown characters, a fact that makes me ache as I long for more major video game characters who look like me.
It’s not like every worry I ever had is gone. I don’t know where my partner and I will end up in the long run, and I continue to work on myself as I learn about the various ways my internalized transphobia and homophobia manifest themselves in my life. I still have ways I want to grow. I still feel like I’m trying on different labels and understandings of self when it comes to gender and sexuality. I know, though, that I’m moving toward a freer and happier life with my partner.
A couple days after my partner came out, she had a big work trip that meant she’d be gone for a week. It was during this time that I went full “goblin mode” and indulged in my unrelenting Final Fantasy VII-inspired obsession. When she came home, I remember, we walked up the stairs to our bedroom to take a nap together after her long flight. But instead of going to sleep, we laughed, joked, and kissed. I lay on the bed and looked up at her, admiring the sunshine as it passed through her long caramel-colored hair. She looked so beautiful.
I was still worried about a million things, but some of the knots inside my chest loosened, and I felt like, in that moment, I could see her for the first time. I cried tears of joy.
