From Mediterranea Inferno to Baldur's Gate 3: the queer ecstasy of monster-loving

Hello! Eurogamer is once again marking Pride with another week of features celebrating the intersection of LGBTQIA+ culture and gaming in all its guises. Today, Sharang Biswas explores the allure of the monstrous, from Mediterranea Inferno to Baldur's Gate 3.One bright Thursday morning, I walked into class and asked my NYU graduate students what they'd thought of the movie I'd recently assigned, FW Murnau's classic 1920's German silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. Within nary a heartbeat, one of my gay students looked me straight in the eyes and declared, "Count Orlok is hot!"This wasn't a wholly unexpected response. The queer attraction to monstrosity has long been a recurring topic of academic discourse. In 2021, in this very series of Pride-themed articles, Dr Lloyd (Meadhbh) Houston discussed - paying particular attention to Resident Evil Village's beloved and gigantic Lady Dimitrescu - how queer folks reframe, recontextualize, and reconstruct monsters in media in order to...