When I was in middle school, my principal decided that it would be a good use of time and resources to have a program twice a month before school called “Building Men” that would help the male students who attended grow into men of “character, integrity and strength.” During these meetings, something always felt off to me. I felt as if these rules of masculinity being described to me were only going to confine me into a space that I didn’t feel comfortable with. I needed something to change.
It’s only fitting then that the first line of the Steam page of Baba is You contains the phrase “change the rules by which you play.”
The very first thing Baba is You’s opening level requires from the player is removing the word stop from the phrase “Wall is stop,” allowing Baba to freely move around the level, no longer contained trapped within one small square. It almost feels too on the nose, quite literally pushing aside the constraints of society has placed on queer identities and allowing them to be more free.
After the Supreme Court voted to require all states to recognize same-sex marriage in 2015, I watched video after video of queer couples reacting to the news with elation and tears of joy in their eyes. I watched the outpouring of support from around the world come flooding in, and I thought this was finally the moment where we would finally be able to live freely and thrive in this world and thrive.
As the game progresses however, the situations in which you must change the rules around you become more and more complex, and the consequences for not doing so become more severe. In some levels, the default rules will cause Baba to drown in water, others even involve burning up in lava. It’s as if there is some outside force becoming increasingly upset at the rules of the game being more open, trying to push back and still put a stop to the player no matter what.
Good thing there’s nothing like that going on in the real world.
In these scenarios, it becomes clear that just changing the rules of the environment itself isn’t enough to succeed. The title of the game is Baba is You, but that itself is the ultimate rule you have to break in order to progress. You may be Baba at the very start of the game and at the start of the majority of the levels, but it doesn’t stay that way for long, as the player quickly finds themself transforming into various other named characters, animals, and even traditionally inanimate objects.
In order to survive in a world that wants us dead, we often find ourselves having to shift aspects of our identities, constantly adapting to reflect the circumstances we find ourselves having to deal with. In one way this can be tragic: queer people having to restrict or hide entire aspects of themselves in order to be in certain settings without feeling threatened. And yet at the same time, the freedom to change your identity in ways that those in power don’t allow is an equally empowering experience. Whether it is assuming a different gender identity than the one you were assigned at birth, forgoing the gender binary in its entirety, or exploring your sexuality, making changes to how you view yourself and the world around you as is an integral part of being queer. And when the very same people trying to stomp you out aren’t equipped to handle it? Then it’s one of the most valuable tools in your arsenal. For joy. For success.
For survival.