Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

I am a queer, transgender woman, and will always be hated by dominant portions of society for it. That’s what makes the mythic concept of the vampire so alluring to me. For all intents and purposes, I am the horror, the misunderstood, the vilified, the degenerate monstrosity whose mere existence means that I’m to be banished to the virtual eternal night of cities and towns whose daylight politicians don’t wish to reduce me to ashes. Those who hate me and people like me never fail to exhibit an impulse of violence against us for the crime of simply existing in society; remind me who the monsters are?

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines gets an install on all of my computers for the joy of the game on its own, its connection to a tabletop game I love (that I’ve frustratingly failed to play enough of), but perhaps because of its relation to my own sense of identity. That extends to the very messy, fractured nature of this game and how it was built up by a passionate community. I reroll characters frequently, with multiple starts and stops on different machines.

It’s an RPG I enjoy playing in a macabre world that sometimes feels all too real. It is a mirror that I can see myself in, for better and for worse.