On HBO's Looking, about three gay friends in San Francisco, Jonathan Groff plays Patrick, an earnest video game designer. Patrick made a very astute observation on a recent episdode after he chided his gay boss (Russell Tovey) for creating a game without any female avatars, adding that he preferred playing as female video game characters himself. "Why do you play as a woman?" Kevin asked. "Maybe it is because I'm gay but not for the reason you might think," Patrick responded. "Women are the outsiders in games and I relate to that. Gay people get it."
We sure do. Female video game characters helped shape many of our childhoods, especially the gays of Generation X and Y. Thanks to Sega, Nintendo, Xbox, and the corner arcade, we lived vicariously through dozens of digital divas, but these remain the best:
