As a young gay kid who was often teased and bullied for prancing around like a ballet dancer, I drew confidence from self-assured characters like Nina from Tekken
Growing up, fighting video games such as Tekken and Street Fighter were a core part of bonding during summer holidays for my brothers and I. For me, beat-em-ups were less about nurturing any masculine impulses toward strength and destruction, and more about the lore of the fighting game and its varied fighting styles, which played like a dance on the TV screen. That, and the ever-expanding rosters of sexy, glamorous femme fatales.
There is a joke I have often heard that you know a young boy may be of the lavender persuasion if he only picks female characters in beat-em-up fighting video games – the parents might think it’s because he fancies them, but really it’s a form of diva worship. That was certainly true for me.
As a fan of the Japanese beat-em-up fighting series Tekken, I have had a lifelong fascination with two characters: Nina Williams and her sister, Anna. Nina debuted in the very first Tekken game in 1994. A complex, ice cold, blond bombshell assassin from Northern Ireland, Nina is distinct for her skin-tight purple outfits and knee-high boots, with a fighting style which blends aikido and koppojutsu. While the Tekken community believe her early designs appeared to be derived from Sharon Stone’s performance in Basic Instinct, later iterations of the character drew from a wider pool of femme fatales including Kill Bill’s Beatrix Kiddo (in Tekken 7, Nina wears a destroyed wedding gown).
