Trans Artist ALOK Is Sparking Something Creative & Queer With The Sims

Driving that home is the talent that Maxis (the developer behind The Sims) featured in front of the camera including bisexual Brazilian popster Anitta, Magnet an artist who uses the power of cake making to bring others closer together, and ALOK a poet, author, and activist who challenges the gender binary through their writing and comedy.

To better understand the message PRIDE, ahem, sparked up a conversation with ALOK their experience growing up with The Sims and how it sparked their creativity and allowed them to explore more sides of themselves — sides that they had to hide for so many years. Now ALOK is hoping that the "Spark Something" campaign can inspire others in the same way.

ALOK, can you tell us about this collaboration with The Sims?

I grew up with such a deep love and respect for The Sims because I felt like I couldn’t control the world that I had around me, in the small town in Texas that I was in. So, I could sort of create the ideal world on this computer game.

I’m a big believer that reality is continually being designed, and that informs and infuses so much of my work today that things aren’t permanent. They’re constantly being renegotiated and remade in that we hold the tools, those construction tools. And looking back, I think even before I have that vocabulary, that awareness, playing Sims helped me come to that awareness, which is that we get to craft our own lives. And that can be a beautiful thing, self-creation.

So when this opportunity came around, I was geeked out. My inner child was like, "this is awesome." What I think what really spoke to me about this campaign was the concept of passing the spark or the idea that we all have the capacity to inspire change and each other.

That is really beautiful. So, how did you end up being involved in the creation of “Spark Something”?

I think some people who work at Sims were familiar with my work as an artist and thought I was aligned with the concept. And then what was really neat about it is that I always try to take collaborations where I can center my artistry and my creativity. So from the get-go, they asked me my own thoughts. And I felt like I had a role in sculpting my part in the commercial.

It was really important for me to be able to demonstrate my poetry. So in a scene where I’m in that fabulous wig and gown — which were custom made for me, by the way, and I still have them — and I get to wear that, which is cool. My poems are actually written in the background. So it was an entire room of my poems painted on the walls, which is just really awesome.

I told them I felt like there was a trope with trans representation where the before and after have to be masculine to feminine, and I didn’t want to reproduce that trope. And so they took my creative consult for the first look, where I’m wearing like nonbinary earrings and like this really fun look. And we’re elevating it.

[What] I really loved is that they did their due diligence to make sure that I felt happy with the way that I was being represented. And that’s really rare and precious, I think. Especially when we think about trans representation.

Why is it do you think that queer and transgender folks are drawn to The Sims?

I think it’s multifaceted. One, it’s like, we don’t really get safety. I really feel a lot of sadness, because the majority of trans and gender non-conforming people like myself can’t actually physically express themselves without fear of real, very real danger. So, I think video games have historically been a place where we actually get to live our authentic lives in a world that isn’t yet ready for us.

It’s really cool when Sims has features like allowing people to use their preferred pronouns or choose their sexual orientations because that actually can go a long way and allow people to progress in their self-acceptance journey and actually find people who accept them for them.

I think that’s so queer. Like, we find ourselves in so many situations we don’t have language for, and I just genuinely want to point in my mouth and say “une berbity” because it’s just so absurd. I think Sims gives us a visual vocabulary that we resonate with in terms of the lives that we have to be in.

The third thing is the idea of being able to safely construct space around you. In a world where we’re seeing more and more LGBTQ spaces, shut down more and more criminalization of our communities being forced into the closet and like forced into living a confined life. I think being able to like design your own home is important. I mean, yes, this involves me getting all the cheat codes and like having like a zillion-dollar budget...

Rosebud [a cheat in The Sims that would give the player unlimited money] will forever live in my brain!

Rosebud, yes! I would just have millions of dollars to, like craft, these magnificent palatial homes, and I think that’s so clear. therapeutic when you’re being restricted and made to be small, how maximal you can be in the sun.

So how long have you been on the creative community side of The Sims?

I started playing Sims when I was maybe 12 or 13. This was like, back in the era of like the Dell desktop family computer that would crash everyone’s when you rosebud too much. And I played that for years. And then, I kind of phased out of playing video games and computer games for a while because I think they had become sites of toxic masculinity.

As I came into my transness, more, I felt like sad saddened by that because gaming was really an integral part of my adolescence. Now I feel like as an adult, I’m really returning back into it. Like, I actually have a friend coming over tonight, and we are playing my Nintendo Switch.

I think it’s really beautiful to be given permission to see such explicit queerness. It makes it feel safer for people like me, who often feel apprehensive around gaming spaces because of just a lot of misogyny.

So outside of The Sims, are there other games that resonate with you?

Nintendo consoles have also felt very queer to me, like Yoshi and Birdo. Are you kidding me?

Oh, Birdo, I’ve written about Nintendo’s weird handling of Birdo in the past.

People always asked me in interviews about trans people who have inspired me from history, and I’m like, Birdo. Birdo’s representation was really foundational to me. Also Princess Daisy.

There’s just this idea that you can be feminine and kick ass like Kirby is really important to me. And as someone who routinely gets told that I look like a cartoon or that I’m ridiculous or whatever, there’s a kind of strength in being able to look at cartoons who can be badass. So I think like games like Super Smash Brothers have always been really fun for me.

What is it that you hope people take away from not only your performance in “Spark Something”— which is fantastic by the way — but the commercial as a whole?

Thank you! I just really want people to stop using the word “impossible.” Because “impossible” is a foot soldier to the status quo.

What I’ve learned is that people do impossible things every day because they exceed our imagination of what’s possible. And the only way that we can grow not just as artists but as human beings, is by encountering people who are doing something so magnificent. It magnetizes us and makes us expand our horizons of what we thought was possible.

In the commercial, the Plumbob traveling [from person to person] is such a distillation of what I try to do as an artist when I’m performing. I hope that I can inspire other people to live their best life, to inspire other people to live their best life.

We know that adage, well, that hurt people hurt people. But I also think creative people inspire creative people like the transference property doesn’t just have to be negative. It also can be wonderful.

“Spark Something” is available on Youtube, and to find out more, be sure to check out the website.