Endless Thread - Hidden Levels: Choose Your Player (Side Quest)

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Today, Stef Sanjati is a creator on YouTube with over half a million subscribers. Her content mostly focuses on her two greatest loves — makeup and gaming — often combining the two with her otherworldly video game-inspired beauty tutorials. Growing up in small-town Ontario, though, Stef was a quiet, introverted kid who was bullied a lot. For one thing, she looked different from her peers. Having been born with a rare genetic condition called Waardenburg Syndrome, Stef has several distinct physical features, including wide-set blue eyes and a natural streak of white hair. But there was something else that she didn’t quite have the words for back then – something she felt closest to while playing as her favorite avatar in World of Warcraft, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. That something else was that Stef is trans. Choosing your player is a near-ubiquitous experience in gaming. Whether it's picking from a stock of ready-made options in Mario Kart or carefully calibrating a custom avatar in World of Warcraft, a gamer's choice of character has a huge impact on the gaming experience. But when a gamer is given the chance to choose, or even build, a brand new identity outside of the one they experience every day, the potential impact goes far beyond simple gameplay. Credits This episode was written and produced by Frannie Monahan and edited by Meg Cramer. Mix, sound design and music composition by Paul Vaitkus. "Hidden Levels" is a production of 99% Invisible and WBUR's Endless Thread. The Managing Producer for Hidden Levels is Chris Berube. The series was created by Ben Brock Johnson. Series theme by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Series art by Aaron Nestor.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Amory, I know you're not a gamer, but from your Hidden Levels episode about the history of the joystick, I do know that you have played Mario Kart. I have. I have played Mario Kart once in my life. Did not win by a long shot, but... Which character did you choose when you started your race? I was Ludwig.

Does that mean anything to you? I'm not a like modern Mario person. So I like it's Yoshi, Princess Peach, Toad, Wario, Mario, Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Donkey Kong. Like those are my options. Ludwig, I'm less, I don't know as well. What made you choose Ludwig? Honestly, I just loved his flowing blue hair. He has blue hair.

I didn't know what he really looked like until later. A much later Google reveals that he's got like a dinosaur body. And he has a single tooth. He's got like a Tom Cruise center tooth, pointy center tooth. But it's that blue hair, man. Well, that flowing blue hair is relevant. Because this episode, our side quest from Franny Monique. is a special one to me.

Our series is about how video games can change the world beyond video games. And when we think about how video games can offer you the opportunity to choose identities that are different than the one you're experiencing every day, you can imagine some possibilities that go way past picking Woodwig because of blue hair. Here's Franie's episode, Choose Your Player. Hello, Little Buns, hello everybody. Hello, whoever you are. Thank you for joining me on my YouTube channel.

My name is Steph Saniyadi. I am a former makeup artist. Steph Saniati is a content creator on YouTube, a transgender advocate, a makeup artist, but beyond all else? I'm a hardcore gamer and I'm a big fan of World of Warcraft. And I am here today to bring you a World of Warcraft War Within inspired makeup look, of course inspired by the new expansion that's coming out in a couple of days. It's already in early access.

I am a 20... Most of Steph's makeup content is super. super-influenced by various video games, sparkly and colorful Pokemon-inspired looks to dark and smoky ones from the Witcher game series. Today's tutorial is for a bright, metallic, orange, and purple style, inspired by the game that changed her life, World of Warcraft. And while we blend, let me tell you why I love World of Warcraft. I have been playing World of Warcraft since I was nine years old. I'm 29 in November, so it's been 20 freaking years. This is the 20th anniversary of the game. For anyone who hasn't played World of Warcraft, or Wow for short,

the game is set on the fictional planet of Azaroth, a fantasy world filled with mythical beings and magical quests. I originally got into World of Workcraft because my brother was into World of Warcraft, and I loved my brother, and I wanted to always be around him and do the things that he was doing. When Steph followed her brother into the world of Azaroth, she got to leave behind the small, conservative town in Ontario where she grew up. When I was like 9, 10, 11, I was going through a lot of bullying at school. The thing that I struggled with was even prior to knowing I was queer,

I was born with a genetic mutation called Wardenberg Syndrome. Wardenberg syndrome has a few distinct physical characteristics. For example, Steph has wide-set eyes that are this bright blue color. Ever since she was a little kid, Steph has also had a natural streak of white hair at her forehead. She's also deaf in her left ear, which is another symptom of Wardenberg. So even from a very young age, it wasn't physically possible for me to blend in with my peers. And being able to, in a digital world, have a choice about how I showed up and how I appeared was extremely powerful at a time when I resented the way that I looked for so many reasons.

In Azaroth, you can be whoever or whatever you want. Ork, dwarf, elf, human, gnome, etc. In the game, these are called races. There's currently 25 to choose from. You also choose a gender, male, or female, and you can customize your character's appearance however you want. Hair, facial features, skin color, clothes. The character at the center of Steph's story,

she created when she was 11 years old, about a decade before her transition. A beautiful male blood elf, she called Lays, because she was eating Lays chips. at the time. I remember choosing the Blood Elf specifically because they were so beautiful. And often at that time period in the world of Warcraft and in the culture around the game, there was a lot of jokes made about how Blood Elf men are mistaken for women by other people in the world or that they're actually, they're too feminine. It felt more in line with who I was than all of the other extremely

very buff and very muscular male sort of archetypes that you could choose from. The blood elves, following the will of their crazed leader, Kaeltha Sunstrider, channeled dangerous, chaotic magics. Blood elves are a tall, slender, and elegant subclass of elf with glowing green eyes. They were added as a playable option in the 2007 expansion of World of Warcraft, Burning Crusade. As one of the remaining blood elves, you must fight to protect Quelthelas and help redeem the soul of your ancient people. Steph still remembers the morning Burning Crusade dropped. As she describes it, expansion drop day is basically Christmas for nerds.

Her dad waited outside of Walmart before opening to score not one, but two collector's editions of the expansion for her and her brother. There was supposed to be a rule that it was one per person, but he said, look, both of my kids really want this. Please let me have two of these collectives. And they did. And then he got home and they let us stay home from school and play through that very special.

first day of the expansion, which is huge. When Burning Crusade came out, Steph's brother, Tony, also created a male blood elf character. The community had a sort of understanding of them as a bit, maybe not queer-coded, but there was definitely a bit of a disdain for them amongst people who didn't play them. When I first played a Blood Elf male, I was a little insecure about it, probably. I was kind of like, yeah, you know, well, these guys are the only ones that could be Paladins, and I'm not, you know, I don't really play it because I like being a little. a blood elf or whatever. But I did like being a blood elf, and I'll admit that.

A paladin is a kind of holy knight or warrior. It's a class of character within World of Warcraft. After picking your race, you also get to pick a class, which is basically like your fantasy job. Some other options include demon hunter, monk, warlock. Blase the Blood Elf, Steph's character, was a rogue, a kind of super-stealthy assassin, ideal for sneaking around unseen. My choice of the rogue for my blood elf character was very specifically at that time I wanted to not be receiving attention that I didn't want. At school, I know she was bullied quite a bit for being a bit more effeminate. Trans people just weren't very visible at the time. She didn't fit in very well.

But when we got on Mortal of Warcraft, you know you are your character and you can go out and sort of Express yourself how you want to. Again, Steph hadn't realized that she was trans yet. Back then, she didn't even know there was a word for how she felt. I had no idea what trans people were. But I know the earliest that I could understand was, based on the knowledge I had, was that I was gay. And I think I figured that out around 11 years old, around the same time I started playing the Blood Elf Rogue. And if you can remember the early 2000s, being a queer kid during that time sucked.

The earliest I actually heard of. about gay, you know, was with slurs and insults. So my introduction to the world of queerness and to what queer people were was, you know, hate speech, slurs, personal attacks, and also Jerry Springer with, you know, that was not good trans representation. So my experience with queer identity for the first several years of being aware of it were very frightening and very traumatic. But in an online game, no one really needs to be. to know who you are or what you look like in real life. And if you happen to meet a jerk, you can just block them.

So in Azroth, playing as Lay's, Steph was free to be herself. My mom and my brother specifically were asking, like, why do you spend so much time with this game? Why is it so important that you play this character? And I said, because I get to be beautiful. I always remember the way that I felt when I said that, because it was the most honest thing I'd ever said as a kid. It was just I felt my heart like ripping when I said it. It wasn't about a peak physical beauty that I wanted. I just wanted to feel good about myself.

I wanted to feel at home in my body. And I only really felt that way when I saw myself through the lens of this blood elf, this feminine character. And interestingly, over the course of the following years, I started taking steps to reflect that in the real world. Steph says she was forcibly outed as gay in high school, which made most things. a lot harder. But there was also no reason to hide it so much anymore. I decided I'm just going to

lean into myself because they're going to treat me horribly one way or another, right? So I started presenting extremely femme. I wore the clothes that I wanted. I did my makeup every day. I practiced with makeup constantly. And, you know, in a similar vein to my dad going out and getting those collectors editions, he actually built in my closet a beauty studio for me, which I remember with so much like that, I feel so grateful that he was so supportive of me. Because a lot of queer kids did not have that. Tony remembers the hostility his sister faced in their hometown, especially as Steph began expressing her femininity more outwardly.

I know there were some parents who just refused to let their children talk to Steph anymore, things like that. There was one time that my mother's car was vandalized with slurs and things like that. So there was definitely, it brought a lot of negative attention on her locally. When I was afraid walking down the school hallway, because I faced violence and harassment every single day without fail, I discovered this in therapy many years later, but I would kind of conjure this Blood Elf rogue character for myself. The Blood Elf was quick and evasive and could even turn invisible. Steph started darting swiftly between classes as a way to avoid too much unwanted attention. And I did that every day at school.

The day after Steph graduated, she moved out of her small town to Toronto. She got a job working at the makeup counter at Shoppers Drug Mart, Canada's largest pharmacy chain, and started vlogging about our life, makeup, and of course, gaming. Around this time, something happened that caused Steph to really begin questioning her own gender identity. She met a woman named Christine. The first time she came in, she was presenting male. And she was asking for help with a full coverage foundation. So I thought that she was a drag queen.

And so I asked her like, oh, is this for like a drag thing? And she said something like that. But the next time she came in, she came in presenting femme. And she had a wig and she had her makeup done. And she asked me for help with her makeup. And it was that moment that I understood, okay, this is not drag. This is like she, this is her. And I felt this empathy,

that it felt bigger than empathy that I'd felt before it. But it was only through being in her presence and hearing her talk about her own experience that I realized, okay, this is my experience? Like, I feel this. What does that mean? For me, is this what I want to do? Is this who I am?

And the answer just kept coming back, yes, and I was really nervous, but I did it anyway. Because to me, it was like there's no choice here. It's I do this or I die knowing I didn't. Hi, everybody. I had a plan for this video, and it was very intricate and it was very artistic and what ended up happening was I just kept on reading and reading what I wrote And I felt it was just going to distract from what I wanted to actually say I've come to understand that I am transgender

I've come to understand that I've always been uncomfortable with my maleness not my masculinity and now that I see it that way the rest of my life makes so much sense my child Hi everybody I'm back. It's been just about two weeks on my T-blocking and I have a little bit of updates for you. Nothing made. I started documenting my transition on YouTube shortly after, and then my career kind of took off in tandem with my transition from that point. It has been two months since I started my estrogen pills, so I have a lot of updates to bring you. It has been nine whole months on estrogen.

That's like an entire baby. That's an entire fetus development term. Hello, Little Bunz. It is Steph. Welcome to my hotel room. I am in Boston right now. I'm having my facial feminization. surgery in two days on... But all the while, I was still returning to Azaroth and playing World of Warcraft. By now, Steph stopped playing as Lays, a character she had spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours with, since her childhood.

After all, Lays was a man, and that's not who Steph was. Before 2020, there was a paid feature in World of Warcraft where you could change a character's gender. It was only $15, but something kept Steph from taking that step. I guess again it was this apprehension, like, do I make this choice? So Steph made new characters, ones that explored different parts of her femininity. I played a Blood Elf Paladin named Akanya. I played her, and I role played her, I guess, in a way that was different from my rogue,

where she was very... Brieanne of Tarth, sturdy, very walking into danger, headstrong, like, very confident. I would embody a certain feeling when I played the character, right? And for me, that Blood Elf Paladin was always very self-assured and ready and capable. And it was a different feeling. So that's what I played a lot of during that time. I also played a night elf warrior woman, very Amazonian, very feminine rage. It was a different expression of where I was at was I wanted to feel this feminine strength and confidence.

And I wanted to feel secure in my body and in my mind. And I wanted to feel confident and safe, right? and so I played characters that made me feel that way. Steph's online empire grew to well over half a million subscribers on YouTube. She kept posting makeup and gaming videos. She vlogged through her facial feminization surgery. She also started an in-game club or guild within World of Warcraft called The Bread Squad, which was made up of her growing fan base.

Steff's brother, Tony, joined in two, leading raids for the guild. For several years, Steph's original Blood Elf, Lays, remained in suspended animation until finally she was ready to take the leap. And that was around the time that my transition was really kicking into gear. So I was like, okay, this is working, this is correct. I feel good about this.

Let me make this heart character, this soul character, like this original reflection of myself, I want her to reflect me again. Steph changed her character's gender. Lays became Layrin. Steph's story of discovering herself through video game avatars is just one of many. especially within the trans community.

I've had conversations with other trans people about the whole, oh, yeah, I played a female character in a fighting game when I was a kid because it made me feel more represented. Definitely, the experience of using video games as a vehicle for the exploration of gender is very much a thing. It's very consistent. It is not unique to me. I am Sheen Rivera.

I am a psychiatrist and psychoanalytic therapist located in Columbia, South Carolina, and my pronouns are they them? Dr. Rivera works primarily with LGBTQ youth and young adults using virtual spaces, like video games. It's almost an inevitability for anyone doing clinical work with LGBTQ youth, that they are going to encounter video games as being a part of their lives, and that recent surveys have shown through glad that nearly one and every three players between the ages of 13 and 17 identify as LGBTQ. Dr. Rivera started noticing the therapeutic benefits that gaming and specifically game avatars can have when a client of theirs brought up the life simulation game, The Sims.

She was creating this avatar that became another version of her, that she was able to finally, finally, play with different types of style of clothing and haircuts and makeup, and not be afraid that this was something that was going to be discovered or found out or used to clock her and therefore make her a victim of violence. Little by little, she herself started to try out different things that her avatar did, different types of makeup, different types of clothing, until she settled into this style that was much more her rather than a preconceived notion of masculinity or femininity. And as that happened, she felt more like herself.

There's a famous 20th century psychoanalyst and pediatrician named Donald Wood Winnicott. He believed that play in and of itself was a form of therapy. He said that it is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self. Basically, through playing, we're able to access the truest version of ourselves. To Dr. Rivera, there was a clear connection between the experiences of their clients in Winnicott's

theories. His theory here is that a part of us becomes annihilated and lost when we are threatened. and can't fully play and discover our true selves. So playing with something like gender norms can't really happen if you don't feel safe to express yourself. Unfortunately, that's an experience shared by a lot of people in the LGBTQ community. Play can't really happen under threat of violence. So when we think of the young child,

for whom it is really hammered in very early on that any kind of gender nonconformity, for example, is going to be met with punishments, that if a boy doesn't act like a boy or a girl doesn't act like a girl, and whatever those behaviors entail that that will be rebuked, where else can they truly think about the various roles that they might occupy or the possibilities of who they might be and who they are? The virtual space allows for an element and a cushion of safety to explore that. Winnicott also recognized the importance of certain items outside of ourselves that he called transitional objects. Transitional objects are important developmentally because not only do they provide comfort and emotional security, they also help a child to distinguish between me and not me. Think a little kid's favorite blankie or stuffed animal,

something that she might drag around everywhere that helps her feel safe, but that she also knows is different from her. Dr. Rivera thinks that we use video game avatars in a similar way. We kind of have to have transitional objects to be our playthings, that these are these other things that are not us, but have the capacity to carry aspects of us that we want to explore. So I might make an avatar using character customization, for example, to make something more like me.

but when I'm doing that, I might be doing any number of things. I might actually be making it who I want to be, or maybe I'm making it who I think other people want me to be. Or maybe I'm making this into a, well, would it be interesting if this was me? Or funny or humorous, what have you, in this way that really triggers the imagination to be fully exercise. Dr. Rivera says that as a kid, they also played out these theories through video games. I used to play Super Smash Bros. competitively. And when Super Smash Bros. Melee came out, Zelda and Sheek appeared as a character. And I was instantly drawn to them. Zelda, as in from The Legend of Zelda, the iconic Nintendo video game franchise that is widely

considered one of the best gaming series of all time, which I, Frannie Monaghan, would personally have to agree with. Anyway, for the uninitiated, Princess Zelda is not, in fact, the protagonist of these games. She usually plays the part of the damsel in distress, whom the game's hero, Link, must rescue. But true fans will know that there is a lot more to Zelda than that. She often aids Link throughout his various adventures. For instance, in the 1998 game Ocarina of Time, spoilerer, alert here, Zelda disguises herself as Sheik, who appears to be a mysterious boy who coaches Link

through much of the game. In earlier versions of Super Smash Brothers, the Nintendo Cinematic Universe battle game, players could switch back and forth between Zelda and Sheik forms during a match. Later, Sheik became a separate, playable character. For me, it was really important that I always played equally as Sheik and transform back into Princess Zelda during these matches. When I connected now into my current experience of myself and my gender, as somebody who is transfeminine and non-binary, I very much see myself in a state of flux in transformation,

that I see these parts of the feminine specifically as being much more important to who I am and how I express myself. And that it turns out, I knew that all along as a child and I was playing playing that out in the game was something that took me by surprise. Steph, our World of Warcraft gamer, and the hero of this story, says that her relationship to her avatars and what they do for her sense of self has evolved over time. Being able to say, well, I want to feel beautiful, or I want to feel strong, or I want to be perceived in this way or that way, that was important to me then.

And nowadays, it's important to me to represent myself as, close to reality is possible, actually. Like, I look for characters or ways that I can express Wardenberg syndrome on my digital avatars or to have my white hair variation or my, you know, wide-set eyes. I look for ways to do that. In the last few years, Steph has left her stealthing rogue days behind

and has stepped into a new light. She primarily plays as a priest now, a healing character, which she told me just feels right. I may not be choosing characters based on my gender identity. but certainly embodying the priest and being a raid leader and all of these things, there is an identity that I'm connecting with as a leader, as a healer, as a guide. You know, this is where I'm at in my life, and I'm making choices in the game that reflect that. And also nurture it.

It's not just like, I feel this in reality, so I make it happen in the game. It's a relationship. It's a dynamic between the real world and the digital one, where there's an exchange, and the identity grows as a result of that. Gender and gaming is a historically fraught relationship. There are still pockets of the gaming community that are very associated with exclusion. I mean, what does a stereotypical gamer, according to popular media, look like? Probably not Steph, or any other woman, for that matter.

But still, it's not just trans people. You know, when I think about the white cisgender heterosexual man that plays a video game, his avatar is important to him as well. Remember Tony, Steph's brother, and his Blood Elf character? At the time of creating his blood elf, Tony wasn't looking for the same representation as Steph. He was just trying things out. He was this very sort of flamboyant, villainous character that I would sort of play. And it was just a different side of me, I guess, in much the same way as Steph was using it to, you know, try out identities and things.

It was similar for me in that, you know, we grew up in a very conservative town in Ontario. And I had really learned, you know, you have to behave a certain. way to fit in and you have to, you know, be masculine and not effeminate and you can't behave this way or whatever. But online, you could try whatever. Until recently, Tony identified as a straight man. However, in the past few years, his spouse, whom he met on Burdening Crusade, that same 2007 expansion of World of Warcraft, has come out as trans. Today, Tony identifies as being in a queer relationship. I think what games do of any kind and especially video games is that they force all of us to question who we are. Dr. Rivera again.

In a particular way, those who grow up LGBTQ, by not really meeting the standard of what is considered quote unquote normal, we grow up with this constant questioning. But that in some ways that can also be the thing that makes us versitizing. and flexible and creative in a way that, frankly, sometimes people who are cisgender or heterosexual might be deprived of because there is the assumption of being the norm. When you are put into a virtual world

and you're suddenly, in some ways, forced to inhabit an avatar that is a different race or a different gender, you become them in some way and they become you. It does suddenly allow you to question everything. And I do think that's a mindset that can benefit anybody. In 2020, Quantum Foundry, which is a game analytics consulting company, did a survey about character gender preferences.

They found that 29% of male gamers prefer to play female characters. Only 9% of female gamers prefer to play male characters. The researchers suggest that one reason for this might be because men tend to be more harshly judged by society when they deviate from gender norms. For someone who wants to explore another side of their identity, a virtual world, like a video game, can be an anonymous and safe way to do so.

Everybody has an identity. Everybody has a gender identity, frankly. You know, but everybody has an identity beyond that, too. And there's lots of people that live every day in fear of stepping into who they want to be because they think that they shouldn't or they can't. I think that ideally we get to a place where all of us can't. our identity in a way that's healthy and kind and that isn't limited by these restraints that

are in our head that are placed there by culture when we're so young, like we don't need to be restrained by that. Video games are one place to explore that. That episode came from Franny Monaghan. Our next episode in Hidden Levels, our series with 99% Invisible, is coming right up. It's about how the video game world has changed the world of cinema. Take a listen. Bye.

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Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org. Creative Studio. This episode was written and produced by Franny Monaghan. It was edited by Meg Kramer, mix and sound design by our production manager, Paul Vicus,

who also wrote a bunch of the original music for the series, and our theme music was composed by Swan Royale and Paul Vikis. Shout out to Hidden Levels managing producer Chris Barubei for his input on this episode. The rest of our team at Endless Thread is Grace Tatter, Dean Russell, Amory Severson, myself, managing producer Sumitajishi, and Emily Jenkowski. Hidden Levels is our series co-produced with 99% Invisible about how the video game world has changed the world beyond video games. Jump over to that feed or keep listening right here to go to the next level.

Endless Thread is a podcast about the blurred lines between the Bread Squad and real life. Have an online mystery, untold history, or other wild story from the internet you want us to tell. You can hit us up. Email us at Endless Thread at WBUR.org.