This is the two hundred thirty-ninth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Our two hundred thirty-ninth random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality wants to talk about music and games, among other things. It’s Dancing With Demons, by Nat Quayle Nelson, and its tagline in the bundle reads:

Essays at the intersection of Dance, Music, and Video Games

This is one of those “game-related things” entries.

Specifically, Dancing With Demons is a zine, of which we’ve had a few pop up in Scratching That Itch. We’ve even had a tool for making your own zines pop up. Dancing With Demons comes in two PDFs, one meant for digital reading (which is what I did) and another for printing, such that it can be folded into a physical zine. Given that it’s an 18-page zine, this isn’t a single sheet of paper folded creatively, but several pages meant to be folded in half and stapled together.

Inside the zine are five essays about music, games and dancing (as advertised), but also about more than that. Nat’s obsession with a game is inseparable from her navigation of social life on a college campus, from her unrequited crushes and gender identity and self-doubt. These essays are from a time in life that I suspect is awkward for everyone — it certainly was for me, and I didn’t have a non-heteronormative gender identity muddying everything further — and, as such, struck me as surprisingly insightful. When Nat analyzes an album she loves, she is also analyzing herself, in a manner far beyond any self-reflection I could summon when I was a (presumably) similar age. These essays understand that music is intertwined with our lives, ultimately inseparable from our desires, fears, and emotional states at the time we hear it.

Dancing With Demons comes with a music playlist, on Spotify or YouTube. This is especially helpful for two of the essays, which take the form of album reviews. Both reviews are fascinating because Nat really digs into why she thinks she, in parcituar, likes these albums, when others might not. Writing about CupcakKe’s album Ephorize, Nat discusses how its hypersexualized lyrics connected with her in a way that those in traditional, male-dominated hip hop never could, and listening to the album became something of a rebellion against societal taboos about talking about sex. Without Nat’s words to guide me, my own reaction to the music would have been dictated by my lived experience, and I would have struggled to understand its appeal. Instead, I was given a glimpse into another way of connecting with it, born of a very different life.

Perhaps even more interesting is the essay discussing Masked Intruder, a band that satirizes (as Nat puts it) “toxic softboy masculinity”. They’re anonymous, referring to each other only by their color-coded ski masks, and their pop-punk music is a kind of self-aware spoof of the creepy romantic themes that can pervade the genre. In “Heart-Shaped Guitar”, for example, a man serenades his crush only to be called out as a stalker and have the cops called on him (at their live shows, a cop cosplayer threatens to arrest the band and their fans). For Nat, their music lies at an edge: borderline problematic, questionably humorous, and yet holding a certain appeal. Nat recognizes a part of herself in these songs, the part that develops deep crushes on people she’s never spoken to, the part that didn’t know how to express that in a non-creepy way back in high school. This essay reminded me of how I often struggle to articulate why I like certain music that falls on my own edges. Why do I like this electronica track, when it’s so close to being unbearably cheesy? Why does this other song appeal to me, when most in its genre don’t?

I love music, so naturally I was drawn to the essays that examine Nat’s love for specific musicians and albums. But the most affecting writing here may be in the essay titled “Lady Icarus”, which is about dance. Well, a dance class. Except that’s not really what it’s about. It’s about the struggle to be accepted (and to accept oneself) as a trans woman, about how that identity affects every interaction with every other person. It’s about failing and hurting and rising again, all in two-and-a-half zine pages. It’s excellent.

All of Dancing With Demons is excellent, really, and worth a read. Which you can easily do, even if you missed it in the bundle, because it’s offered for any price you wish to pay, including free. If you are interested in music, dance, queer identity or (yes) games, give it a look.

That’s 239 down, and only 1502 to go!