Towards Transgender Game Studies: The Necromantic Mode and its Trans-Figurations

This thesis sets out the core of a new approach to doing transgender work in game studies. It does so by assembling a framework of “necromantics”, which prioritises relationships between bodies, rather than individual psychology. By widening its lens, necromantics can account for the way that relationships endure in the face of radical transformation. I then apply this to the boys love visual novel, a subgenre of Japanese videogame that focuses on complex bodies, and thus resonates with certain trans experiences. Ultimately, this thesis aims to dig into the connections and transformations which both situate transness and make it possible.