Play Like a Fangirl

How women and queer gamers express and elicit excitement, creativity, and desire in online gaming communities and beyond.

How do cosplayers, modders, fan artists, fanfiction authors, and TikTok content creators build content and communities for marginalized and underserved fans of games? In Play Like a Fangirl, Kristine Ask, Ashley Guajardo, Tanja Sihvonen, and Jess Tompkins look at the collective efforts of such fans to create meaningful and arousing connections to video game worlds, to characters, and to one another. Using pleasure as a lens, they show how fans’ playful practices both reflect current cultural values and shape how we relate to video games and ourselves.

The authors develop the concept of what they call the “fangirl gaze” to show how communities of fangirls can be regarded as oppositional, subversive, and transformative in terms of societal expectations of gender, play, and sex, and how these gazes are read within larger social and political contexts. Accessibly and engagingly written, the book expands upon current understandings of video games’ impact on society and culture by exploring the expressions of desire and sexuality outside of those of white cis-het males in mainstream game culture, shedding light on understudied topics and underrepresented (minority) gaming experiences.