By Sarah Doherty Granoff

I attended the New York City Pride Parade for the first time in 2019. Like many, I had spent the previous two weeks preparing my outfit. It wasn’t anything spectacular – a crocheted rainbow scarf with the word “PRIDE” on it and a custom ordered tee-shirt – but it was mine. As I counted down the days to the event, it dawned on me more and more what I was about to do. For the first time in my life, I was going to publicly identify myself as being part of the LGBTQIA+ community. And, when the day came, I donned my outfit with pride: rainbow scarf around my neck, black tee-shirt with the asexual pride flag boldly emblazoned on the back. I met up with my sister at the parade, squeezing through the crowd to find her. Later that day, I posted the photos she took of me to Instagram. 

I was out. 

A few months later, on a rainy night in early November, I sat down to play The Outer Worlds, a new video game that I’d heard a lot of good buzz about. Released in late October of 2019, The Outer Worlds by Obsidian Entertainment is an engaging science-fiction action role-playing game set in a star system colonized by megacorporations. It has excellent and clever writing, satirizing and critiquing the follies and failings of late-stage capitalism through its world and characters.

One of these characters is a woman named Parvati Holcomb, conceived by Chris L’Etoile, developed by Kate Dollarhyde, and voiced by Ashly Burch. From the moment I met Parvati, I knew that she would be one of my favorite characters. Parvati comes across in dialogue as very sweet, caring, and maybe a little naive. She joins the player’s team as the group mechanic, traveling with the player and tagging along on various quests. As the player gets to know her, they eventually learn that Parvati has a crush on an engineer named Junlei, and Parvati confides that she is nervous about pursuing this romantic relationship.

It is here that I learned that Parvati Holcomb is asexual. From this point on, Parvati’s story is an incredibly well-crafted and compassionate view of her orientation, her insecurities, her fears, and her quest for love in this hyper-capitalist sci-fi world. 

Asexual (along with aromantic and agender) is what the “A” in LGBTQIA+ stands for. Asexuality is a sexual orientation in which a person feels little to no sexual attraction towards other people. While asexual people have existed forever, understanding and acceptance of the orientation is a far more recent development. Lisa Orlando of the Asexual Caucus of the New York Radical Feminists published the The Asexual Manifesto in 1972, defining the term and outlining the harm that allonormativity (society’s assumption that every person experiences sexual attraction) does to asexual people. In 1980, the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) included Inhibited Sexual Desire as a disorder, pathologizing asexuality as a mental illness. An exception for people who self-identify as asexual was not added to the definition of this disorder until the publication of the DSM’s fifth edition in 2013. The asexual pride flag was introduced to the public in 2010, and that same year Asexual Awareness Week was founded by an asexual woman named Sara Beth Brooks. In 2023, model and asexual and aromantic activist and researcher Yasmin Benoit became the first openly Fee asexual grand marshal for NYC Pride. 

While approximately one percent of the adult population of the US as identifies as asexual (per a 2019 survey conducted by the Asexual Visibility and Education Network), representation of asexuality in media remains limited. There are a couple of examples to be found in television, the most prominent being the character Todd from the animated Netflix series Bojack Horseman. In the world of comics, Jughead Jones from the Archie series has, at times, been interpreted as asexual and aromantic, and DC comics confirmed that the Green Arrow character Connor Hawke is asexual in “Think of Me”, a story created by Ro Stein and Ted Brandt for the brand’s 2022 Pride edition.

At the time that The Outer Worlds was released, Parvati Holcomb was perhaps the only canonically asexual character in mainstream gaming. While many games both then and now have characters who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, and some games even have romance options where compulsory sexuality is explored and discussed, asexuality as an orientation hasn’t been similarly represented. Romantic plots that involve a lack of sex generally frame that abstinence as a result of some pathology or trauma. 

The asari Morinth in Mass Effect 2 (BioWare, 2010) has a genetic condition that causes her to inadvertently kill anyone with whom she is sexually intimate, thus requiring any players interested in romancing her to abstain from sex. Zevran of Dragon Age: Origins (BioWare, 2009) and Astarion of Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios, 2023) have romantic plots that include a period of abstinence as the normally sexually forward characters examine their own somewhat traumatic experiences of sex, and explore what a romantic connection might look like without it. These periods of or requirements for celibacy are often treated as plot twists – hiccups in or obstacles to a romantic relationship. These plots are worthy and important in their own right, but, perhaps inadvertently, perpetuate the notion that all romantic relationships must involve sex, that sexual and romantic attraction  necessarily go hand-in-hand, and that a lack of such attraction (or lack of sex in a romantic relationship)  is inherently aberrant or indicative of something wrong.

By contrast, Parvati Holcomb’s asexuality is not presented as a plot twist or aberration in The Outer Worlds. Her sexual orientation is simply a part of who she is, just as central to her character as her cheerful demeanor. Importantly, the game does not ignore her asexuality or the impact it (and society’s view of it) has on her life. A large portion of her personal quest involves helping Parvati navigate her insecurities and concerns regarding her asexuality in the context of pursuing a romantic relationship. In discussing these insecurities, Parvati tells the player that, upon learning about her asexuality, many people call her “cold” and treat her “like a robot,” as if not experiencing sexual attraction makes her less human.

The insecurities felt by Parvati reflect those experienced by her primary creator, Kate Dollarhyde. Dollarhyde, who is also asexual, expressed in a November 2019 interview with Vice’s Patrick Klepek, that Parvati’s insecurities and fear of rejection are feelings that, for Dollarhyde, “[have] persisted through all of my adult life, so I wanted to put that directly in the text to speak to those people who I assume probably feel the same way”. 

I can say that, at least for me, Dollarhyde succeeded in that mission. I personally didn’t learn about asexuality as an orientation until I was an adult. Before that, I had seen my own lack of sexual attraction towards others as something that was wrong with me, something that made me broken or incomplete. Society presented time and time again that romantic and sexual attraction went hand in hand, that you could not experience one without the other, and that experiencing sexual attraction was something integral to being human. And as I watched my peers gush about their crushes and partner off into relationships, I wondered why I wasn’t experiencing the same thing. Learning about asexuality and realizing that my experience was not unique or unprecedented was a joy and a revelation. And seeing that experience represented with such care and compassion in The Outer Worlds made me feel all the more seen and understood. In Parvati, I found a character who shared my experiences, my insecurities, and my certainties. Parvati’s asexuality is not treated as an aberration. It is not the result of trauma or pathology. The only obstacle to be overcome in her romantic pursuit of Junlei is Parvati’s lack of confidence. Parvati’s romance with Junlei proceeds like any other, with the player engaging in a communication-based fetch quest to set the two up on a date. The date itself goes splendidly, and Parvati and Junlei enter a romantic relationship. It’s adorable and wholesome and charming and real. And, for someone asexual like me, it’s much-needed positive representation in a world that often treats asexuality as a flaw to be overcome. 

The Outer Worlds 2 is set to come out later this year. I am hopeful that Parvati Holcomb will return in some way in this sequel. Perhaps we’ll get to see how her and Junlei’s relationship has progressed. But, even if Parvati doesn’t make a return, her inclusion in the first game will always be meaningful and important to me. And, based on that experience with the first game, I’m very eager to see what Obsidian Entertainment does with The Outer Worlds next.

Former Circle Intern Sarah Doherty Granoff has published a number of impactful games, including several about Sarah’s experience as an autistic woman.

---