Book Review - A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton (2025, Dead Ink)
- Trans_Muted
- Jun 30
- 7 min read
By Fili Gena, Chris Cambell, and Dorian Rose.
“I wanted to write something about trans people in the present day […] having relationships and connections to one another.” - Jeanne Thornton, in her interview with Transmuted.
‘A/S/L’ is an abbreviation for ‘Age / Sex / Location’, a greeting particular to certain internet chat platforms, and is often the first message in order of two strangers meeting for the first time.
Dorian
For gender non-normative people such as transgender folks, the nonchalance of online chatter can resemble a unique form of freedom. You can be whoever you want to be.
In a time when trans rights are under vicious attack from Anglo-American figures such as Donald Trump and Kier Starmer, Jeanne Thornton depicts the quotidian existence of three queer characters; exploring the nature of self-acceptance, identity, and connection.
Her story begins in the queer throes of 1998, following the lives of three young game designers with big aspirations. Abraxa, Sash, and Lilith - teen co-owners of game development corporation, Invocation LLC - work on their new video game, Saga of the Sorceress.
We see the embodiment of trans existence throughout A/S/L, of what it means to be dysphoric and euphoric, to explore ourselves, and to simply survive. Transition in online spaces, in video gaming, can take many forms;
“A lot of people in the [video gaming] community are trans [...] the way that kind of online upbringing where everybody kind of starts online, where you’re from, what your background is, these things matter in some ways, but they’re obscured in many more ways.”
The complexities of queer romance are explored with the brilliance of genuine human experience. Characters face all-too-real difficulties of societal homo-trans-phobia, patriarchy, classism; the seemingly infinite issue of forming and maintaining personal boundaries. All with a respectful author-reader dialogue, showcasing Jeanne Thornton’s profound ability to reflect upon ‘what it is to be human’ - or more specifically, ‘what it is to be queer’.
Which leads me to ask you Chris, what did you appreciate the most about Jeanne Thornton’s trans narratives?
Chris
In terms of what I appreciated most, it’s hard to get past the perfect pairing of the subject of transness as explored through the setting of American gaming and internet culture in the 90s. Those were the days of urban legends where every monster had real teeth because there was no easy way to disprove them so dangers were waiting for us around every corner. People believed whatever they wanted to and didn’t worry about the mess it made. Today, the difference is, people choose bigotry in spite of access to relevant information rather than due to a lack of it.
I was just a kid but I remember people being terrified of Y2K. My mom genuinely thought it would spark WWIII. Our clock struck midnight without incident and she kept us up for another two hours, terrified and crying, in case the chaos was waiting for Pacific Standard Time to kick off. When nothing came of it, there were no apologies given or lessons learned. Just a quiet shrug as people began searching for the next windmill to tilt at.
I‘m not sure there was any greater windmill at the time than video games and the danger they posed to “the youth”. Something I was a regular punching bag for. In part because I’d been playing them since I was three years old. But also because I did not know how to keep my undiagnosed neurodivergent mouth shut in the face of obvious adult ignorance.
Then the Columbine shooting happened in a school just like the one I went to, less than 100 miles away actually. This tragedy brought the conversation to a fever pitch in the states. Investigators discovered the shooters had played video games and that somehow became the reason for how and why it happened.
At school drop-offs and pick-ups, parents pointed at those of us that looked like gamers. Warned their kids to, ”Watch out for the quiet ones, you can’t trust them!” even a sensible act like mothers marching on Washington against lax gun laws was promptly co-opted. Conveniently reinterpreted as an effort to ban video games according to any adult I knew.
This was when I first noticed the way society seemed to agree, en masse, that something was a problem in need of solving and I immediately knew they’d gotten it wrong. When I raised concerns adults would just laugh and explain that these things were too complicated for kids to understand. Whether at the dinner table, on the news, or in the courts, all I saw were adults that had abandoned curiosity in favour of fear and easy answers.
The same way they did with gay people. The same way they did with kinky people. The same way they did with trans people. Hence, I grew up in constant fear that someone would discover what I’d known since I was four years old; that I was an imposter, a boy who didn’t know how to boy properly. Because there was no doubt in my mind that, if I was ever uncovered, there would be no mercy waiting for me.
So I played games. I was me but I was not me. Each new game helped me do that better. I learned there were always going to be rules I was expected to follow, patterns that must be memorised, ways to camouflage myself from the enemy, and that there must always be an enemy. The silent survival of “Better them than me” made so many queer and trans people unwitting accomplices in society’s efforts towards our own erasure. All of which was deeply resonant as I read this book. The familiar setting was so well represented that it lent a sense of danger, and regret, that I haven’t often explored when reflecting on my own trans origin story.
Ultimately, I walked away from this book wishing I could load my progress from an earlier save. That I could go back with what I know now and be the person I always hoped would rescue me. But I can’t. Instead, I will continue. I will be me, imperfect and failing in more ways than I have yet realised. Not a hero, but not hiding either.
Fili, I am really curious what it was like for you though. Reading this book without the benefit of being a part of the very specific time, place, and subculture that was American gaming in the late 90s – did it still speak to your experience of growing up queer?
Fili
I did not grow up playing video games, and I was not even born when the story takes place, therefore I cannot understand many of the references of the book. It did however trigger some memories for me: the feeling of excitement when logging into my mum’s PC and watching Youtube music videos from my favourite artists, and memorising all their dance moves alone in the empty living room spaces. The internet gives opportunities to transcend, escape, or even differently embody one own’s body from a young age, which I think is, even if not universal, some sort of shared primal trans* experience, or an experience of defiance nonetheless.
Therefore, I definitely resonated with Jeanne Thornton’s narration of trans experience as a process of active redefinition of what is possible and what counts as real by the main characters. Video Games become a rich terrain to defy gender expectations, escape one's own body, or perhaps coming to understand it differently. Therefore, even if the context of the book doesn’t speak to my youth directly, Jeanne’s intimate commentary on the emotions present in queer youths did.
This is some of the many bits I highlighted that made me sob.
“[...]. This small room, this TV laughing through the wall, this tiredness. One day, false things will fall away.
[...]. Resist turning on the light, which is also wired to a loud fan; pee in silence. Resist looking in the mirror as you wash your hands, spiral of bulk yellow soap on your palm. But you catch a glimpse of your body. Blur out. Forget it.
[...]. Don’t think of that now. Instead: sneak back to your room, sneak back to the computer your father brought home from work at the post office and never brought back. Its fans grind–and as you sign onto your ISP, the scream of a 28.8 modem comes–and you feel your body disappear. False things will fall away, and you know your soul will go. And you know you will find what you need”.
In fact , what I appreciated the most about Jeanne's book is how it didn’t necessarily speak about my life, it didn’t even claim to do so. It doesn't cater to cis readers as it doesn’t care to try to explain why (why we are like this). Indeed, Jeanne in the interview with Trans Muted speaks about how when she started writing the book in 2016 there wasn't a lot of trans writing other than memoirs–especially memoirs specifically framing the years pre-transition as “bad” or “tinted” in some sorts of ways. The book does explore the past by showing characters in different moments of their lives, and how certain feelings persist, but it doesn’t play on that simplistic binary of pre/after transition.
Thornton, according to me, blesses us with a nuanced commentary of self-acceptance as a nonlinear process that can be aided as well as hindered by community. Video games become a creative medium through which the characters redefine gender and transcend physical embodiment altogether. Further down the plot, the multi-character, multi-context structure of the book isn’t a mere stylistic choice: it reflects Thornton’s belief that trans experience is inherently plural and choral. The value of this type of writing for me is that it doesn’t present the reader with just one, diluted, life experience but rather narrates different life trajectories. Despite the context being in certain ways far from my trans youth, I resonate with many of the emotions of the character, and I am happy that it prompts us to look at the complexities of community-building instead of romanticising it.
You can buy A/S/L now from Dead Ink Books - www.deadinkbooks.com
Fili Gena - Social Media
Chris Cambell - Social Media
Dorian Rose - Social Media
Comments