One of the more successful mainstream franchises today is Pokémon (Game Freak, 1996-2014). The series boasts over 260 million games sold worldwide (Lien, 2014), over the course of 18 years and 41 unique digital titles (1). This ignores various other media offshoots, such as the trading card game and animated show. Going back to Adrienne Shaw, during her talk she said, “Queer reading practices have always found alternative ways of being in the most normative of texts” (2013). Finding queer stories in this series of games would help to further entice the gaming industry to making games that feature more diverse voices and perspectives. This essay aims to do just that, by providing close readings one particular game in the series, using the lens of queer theory provided by Jack Halberstam in The Queer Art of Failure (2011). Before that, though, I intend to give a brief overview of how games in the main series of Pokémon operate, and locate some blanket queer representations in one of the more recent games in the series. Following that, I will give a brief description of the theory provided by Halberstam, and use that lens to provide that close, queer reading of two characters from Pokémon Black (Game Freak, 2011). Finally, I’ll give a brief look into queer ways of playing games in the Pokémon franchise, as an insight into more mechanical representation of queer ideals in gaming.
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