When I met my girlfriend, she was known as Annie MacDougall, the name she inherited at birth. Now, since the day she had it legally changed (about six months ago), her name is Nova Strange, which is cool, I guess, but as the name implies, a little strange. It’s the name she has always chosen for her video game avatars, which, like their pseudonyms, are mirrored copies of each other, deviating only in the differences between their character creation software.
Annie—I mean Nova—spends multiple hours on a character’s build when she starts a new game. The looped music is highly repetitive, not intended for listening beyond the ten or fifteen minutes most gamers spend on this opening activity. It drives me mad, but Annie insists I stick around. She likes it when I watch, likes an audience, likes to stretch her feet across my lap, and admits that she likes that I don’t like it. Compromises aren’t her strong suit—she won’t mute the music.
It’s part of the process, she tells me. My modus operandi, she says. And while I don’t voice the question out loud, I think to myself, Yours, or Nova’s?
In the end, I stay put, squirming to the mundane music, watching the tweaks and nuanced changes to Nova Strange’s next digital baby—another Nova Strange. Each pixelated biped is designated female, molded to match her predecessor, a previous Nova Strange from an entirely different title. She is shaped appropriately, sculpted like the others: an androgynous tough girl with a trim, boyish haircut the color of neon fire. Annie MacDougall, who is now just another Nova Strange, works her thumbs on the worn joysticks, crafting cheekbones the way she likes them, lips that are not too thin, not too mallard—just right. Inevitably, each Nova Strange wields a gun, a phallic symbol of her masculinity, or, without flourishes, a means to blast the bad guys.
When the narrative allows, when the game offers its players multifaceted pathways, a certain freedom of choice, Nova, the human, directs Nova, the computer-generated effigy, down villainous avenues of character development. When given the chance, Annie MacDougall will play out her fantasy. Nova Strange does exactly as she pleases. She will be crass when she could have been polite, or in any case, neutral. The text options come in threes, and she will always choose number three, the one that might offer insult, result in conflict. She will betray her allies to join her enemies and, eventually, betray them too. She will rejoin her original allies and betray herself, fall into bad habits, squandering her hours on side quests and mini-games.
As Nova Strange, Annie will shoot you in the back. She will cross a galaxy if it means she will have the last laugh. But she would never sit still, parlay and hang around in orbit, even if it meant saving the day. She would sooner kill the alien that comes in peace than share her world with its people.
Nova Strange looks a bit like her avatar, only slightly buck-toothed, and with acne scars scattered in constellations across her temples and cheeks. And while she is 5 foot 2 instead of an even six feet, she is larger than life, more domineering than any armor-clad space Amazon. Get me a beer, she commands, and I try to, but her legs and feet anchor me down across my crotch. Rub my feet? She wiggles her toes, and my hands move automatically. She tells me the boss battles go smoother when I knead her dry heels with oil, when I work her tight calves. I want a beer myself, but I do not voice my own needs.
It takes Nova three attempts to slay the mechanized war machine, but in the end she is rewarded with a cinematic cutscene and a chance to save her game. My hands are numb and my bladder is about to burst, but after more than an hour she raises the drawbridge of her tattooed legs, allowing me to get us both a beverage. I covertly use the toilet, and its porcelain bowl becomes Nirvana.
Sometimes I remember Annie MacDougall—the Annie MacDougall before her transcendence to Nova Strange. I recall her mousy brown hair and eyeglasses, her parchment pale skin, unadorned with ink. I remember how we sometimes cooked together—especially on Friday nights—how she liked it spicy but I liked it mild, how we’d compromise and settle for medium. Nowadays, I do the cooking. I load up the stir-fry, the soup, the mound of couscous with jalapeños and chilies. I pile on the hot peppers, bright red, like boyish hairdos of neon fire or scarlet dragons raging across a white thigh. I have chronic indigestion—you know, from the spice. Although it could be anxiety—you know, from the boss battles.
For a change of pace, we went to laser tag last week. Nova Strange applied yellow-green lipstick to react to the blacklight, wearing it conventionally on her lips, but also like warpaint on her shoulders and neck. She put in her favorite ice-blue contact lenses—the ones with rectangular irises like a goat. They glowed, a pair of will-o’-the-wisp, and for all the world, she looked demonic. Her tattoos popped in the UV light, and so did her breasts, which were on full display in her low-cut shirt, much to the delight of the high school boys who nudged each other and whispered on downy lips. They strapped on their vests, hoisted their guns. They thought they had a chance against Nova. Fools. We were all about to eat lasers and die.
In the dark, under the blacklight, Annie MacDougall became a radioactive monster. Nova Strange became a psychedelic demon, a gun-toting avatar from a game. Lasers tallied the gloom like a meteor shower apocalypse. I aimed, I fired, I missed. My vest activated with a palsy that seized my chest, a vibration like a max-powered dildo clutched over my heart, a message that scribbled on my sternum: You’re dead.
Our respective kill-count reflected our ages in reverse, illuminated figures on the scoreboard: 39 and 24. Seeing those two numbers lit up in the dark like that, side by side, transcribed in LED as if Braille made from light, it was easy to visualize the gap in their values. It got me thinking: Am I too old for this shit? Is Nova Strange too young for me? One thing was for sure: I was only 62 percent of the killer that she was. Okay, so I didn’t write the book on laser tag, but I’ve always been good at math.
Lucky for me, it was just a game. Lucky for me, I knew the truth—it wasn’t real. Under the zigzags of ultra green lightning, below the bed of coiled serpents inked in crimson, beneath the ice-blue eyes of Baphomet, I knew: It was Annie MacDougall, her mousy brown hair and dairy intolerance, her rabbit teeth and calloused thumbs.
Later, back home, she kicked off her shoes and threw her feet up over my lap. She grabbed the controller and activated the console. She wiggled her toes and handed me the sweet almond oil, asked for a beer before I began the massage.
I thought about the character I might create if I were the one to play the game. What features would my avatar bear, what traits would they exhibit? What would be their name, and where would I direct them? Which avenues would they walk? Virtue, menace, or dull neutrality? Hot, mild, or medium? I must have been daydreaming, because Annie snapped her fingers and pointed to the fridge. Big boss ahead, Nova declared. And these feet aren’t going to rub themselves.
I think, in the end, I’d choose a character exactly like myself. If it came down to it, I’d rather watch than play. I looked to the door and knew what lay beyond: an open world adventure, endless avenues and unlimited options. But when you find what works for you, you’d do anything to avoid the final cutscene. I’d cross the galaxy for Nova Bright, but just as willingly, I’d sit still, hang around in orbit.
I brought Annie her beer. I received her feet. I buffered her dry heels with sweet almond oil and pummeled her calves with intention. Nova didn’t beat the boss—not yet—but I knew she would with my help. She focused, and pulled the trigger, a slight smile on her ultra green lips. I buffered away, pummeled with all my might.
I, too, was smiling.
