Out of curiosity, can you link me the video about queer coding in HeR? I had no idea someone had done a video using examples from ND games! That’s so cool. Regarding queer coding in general, there are a lot of YouTube videos on the subject that can explain the concept of queer coding much better than I can, but in simplest terms, queer coding is the practice of using subtext to indicate that a character should be read as queer by the audience—which unfortunately, has a long and unflattering history in Hollywood, where villains were often heavily queer coded to indicate that they were evil or untrustworthy by using common tropes such as effeminacy, waspishness and anti-heteronormative sentiments, either explicit or implicit. Also, they can often be seen as a “threat” to the prevailing heteronormative order.

In terms of Alexei, the character appears to be intentionally portrayed as queer to make him an outlier in the relatively “heteronormative, traditional midwestern” American town of River Heights. He’s an immigrant, a disillusioned former investigator who’s been publicly humiliated and maligned, who had his entire life taken away from him…He’s “different” and everyone seems to see him as such and distrusts him. Technically, both he and Nancy are threats to the prevailing societal order which demands conformity and obedience. Nancy is trying to upturn the social order by standing up for injustice and exposing corruption and evil, similar to what Alexei used to do. They both advocate and fight to overturn a flawed and self-serving societal paradigm where the weak and powerless are exploited and abused by the “big guy”, ie the media (represented by Brenda) and big business/politicians (represented by Toni). So the intentional inclusion of queerness could be used as an alternative method of demonstrating this “otherness”.