Celeste is a highly-acclaimed platformer video game that was released in 2018. In this title, you follow the story of Madeline, a young lady who aims to climb the legendary Celeste Mountain as she tries to shake off the feeling that her life has reached a sort of stagnancy.
As she proceeds on her mission, Madeline encounters all kinds of obstacles and hindrances, including a dark version of herself that represents the personification of her negative emotions and thoughts.
As Madeline perseveres and overcomes the many challenges sent her way, she learns to find peace within herself and becomes more confident in her ability to succeed in whatever she sets her mind to.
After playing the game, many players speculated that the character was trans due to the many hints given in the epilogue expansion. Now, Maddy Thorson, the director of Celeste, has confirmed to the public through a new blog post that Madeline is, in fact, trans in the game’s canon.
I've been wanting to write this forever and today, for whatever reason, I was finally able to https://t.co/YpCOpFT5wH
— Maddy Thorson (@MaddyThorson) November 6, 2020
Asides from confirming Madeline’s gender identity, Director Thorson, who uses they/them pronouns, also revealed that they are trans, too. Thorson revealed a lot of things in the post, such as the fact that they didn’t identify as trans yet when Celeste was still in development.
As a matter of fact, it’s safe to say that Thorson’s journey of self-discovery is parallel to Madeline’s journey. One thing that fans noticed during a cutscene in the Farewell DLC is that Madeline has a trans pride flag on her desk.
That being said, Thorson also acknowledged and addressed the fact that the studio never brought up Madeline’s gender identity in the game. As such, they understand that some fans might criticize and compare this to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling who declared that Dumbledore was gay even though there was no explicit indication of that in the series’ canon.
However, Thorson explained that things just aren’t as straightforward as they like. After all, Madeline’s self-discovery goes hand-in-hand with Thorson’s personal and gradual self-realization. As time passed post-launch, Thorson eventually understood and confirmed what Madeline felt on the inside.
At the same time, the team of developers wanted to give Madeline a sense of privacy. Just like how Celeste treats depression and anxiety in a realistic way, it would make sense that Madeline would be given the same realistic sense of privacy.
Trans representation in the video game community has been on the rise as of late, which can be seen in recent titles such as Tell Me Why and The Last of Us Part II.
That being said, we think there needs to be more representation across the different genres, and it’s great that Celeste may be considered as one of the very first platformer titles to have a protagonist who is trans.
Given how the game itself is all about perseverance as well as discovering or finding oneself, it’s safe to say that Celeste can be considered a great game that conveys the importance of being true to yourself and living a life that’s authentic to who you are.
Hopefully, games such as Celeste will open the way for respectful representation of various gender and sexual identities in video games in the future.
