Lego Fortnite launched this morning, which is Minecraft in Legos in Fortnite? Anyway: the mode features Lego versions of many of Fortnite’s skins, including my best boy, Meowscles. It’s teaching me a lot about myself, to be honest.
I have been a devotee of Fortnite’s sexy trans cat since his release in 2020, even when Epic gave him a Steamboat Willie makeover in 2021. Lately I’ve been running around the game in what I consider Meowscles’ pre-hormones skin, because I think it’s helped me process my own gender shit as I gracelessly age into a middle-aged trans man.
(To catch you up on my headcanon: when I first wrote about Meowscles, Kotaku commenters pointed out that while the game identifies Meowscles as “he,” most calico cats are female. The Meow Skulls skin, which I think is clearly Meowscles, calls the character “she,” which I am reading as hard proof that the cat’s a trans guy, even if Epic has never confirmed it to me.)
So of course I had to check out Meowscles’ Lego-ified version, jumping into the game mode when it went live this morning. He’s got little Lego abs, which I dig, and he keeps his leather daddy harness, which you could argue is weird for a game mode aimed at kids, though not any weirder than it was in regular Fortnite. His boots really lose something in translation, but I don’t think you could make any boots cool when they’re just squares.
Moving to the back, there are those painted muscles again, and the harness gets even more racy. His new butt is an abomination. Let’s not speak of it.
Looking for signs of queerness in a digital version of a kids’ toy isn’t like me. There’s been a growth in queer representation in kids’ media in the last years, but I’ve always valued openly queer stories aimed at adults more, especially when it comes to trans people. This desire is informed by my own past work in trans literature, and by the confrontational politics of groups like ACT UP and Queer Nation that are my legacy. I wrestle a lot with how times have changed and how I should change with them, the way any queer person lucky enough to get older does. People younger than me found themselves in Steven Universe and Modern Family when I had punchlines in Ace Ventura and whatever probably inappropriate-for-my-age queer movie I was able to sneak under my parents’ noses at the local video store. These days, queerness is less on the fringes than it once was, even if it’s no less fraught–and in the case of trans people, maybe even more so. And while I’m glad for the positive changes, I haven’t fully let go of the idea that there’s something inherently taboo or oppositional in queerness, that there isn’t some permanent outsider status that gives queerness its revolutionary potential that we should embrace and preserve.
These are heavy thoughts for a Lego Fortnite cat. But maybe my exegesis of Lego Meowscles represents my own process and growth in understanding the new things queer life can mean today. Lego Meowscles isn’t going to the reading group of Lee Edelman’s No Future or protesting the HRC gala. Maybe he’s married and has kids, or at least nieces and nephews he’s close with. He doesn’t need to strive so hard to maintain his old physique because he’s not the main character at the club anymore; he exercises because it makes him happy rather than because it might land him a date. But maybe, like me, he can’t let go of some of the trappings of the radical queer past; he still wears his boots and harness, the way I’ve still got my skinny jeans and black cadet cap. But maybe, like me, he works to be open to new ideas, to step back and let younger people lead the way even if he doesn’t always agree with or understand them. He’s found a way to fit into Lego world without losing his identity in the process, and maybe that will let him be a bridge to the past for all the Lego youngsters, teaching them their history so they can use the valuable parts in their new fights and let go of what’s no longer needed, and so that their history can’t be stolen or forgotten.
He’s still better than Lego Peely, though.
