About

Arcade Link was Born August 3rd, 1988 in Vancouver BC, Canada. They are non-binary and their pronouns are they/them. As a child they enjoyed reading but more than anything they loved writing. They wanted to be a writer from the age of 6, but it wasn’t until grade 4 when their teacher Mr. Walton encouraged them to write that they decided this was the direction they should go. Arcade Link credits The Legend of Zelda series for being their first major creative inspiration.

Though Arcade would write frequently from elementary school all the way up to 2015, they could never finish a story. They also found that even though they excelled at reading in elementary school, reading became more difficult as time went on. It wasn’t until they were in their thirties that they realized the issue was ADHD.

In 2014 at the age of 26 they decided to write their first novel, they went to the local bookstore on their 2 days off of work every week, and spent the whole day open-to-close working on it. They wrote 90, thousand words, but it ballooned out into an idea bigger than it was supposed to be, and it began to fall apart – those words were only half the story of the first of five books. They decided to stop the novel and take some time away from it, and instead wrote some quick short stories – one a week. It wasn’t long before Arcade simply gave up on writing.

At that time they were working a job that was driving them into the ground. A few years later they realized they were very depressed and quit their job. They decided to return to university in 2018. In 2016 they had started teaching themself how to design video games, and they were loving it, so when it came time to go back to school they finally had something they wanted to go to school for. They padded their semesters with writing courses when the tech courses started to become too much. It was then that they realized they had given up on their dream. They also realized that, while they loved tech, academically it wasn’t for them. They finished their Diploma in Computer Information Systems in December 2021 at Kwantlen Polytechnic Institute, and have moved on to a BFA in Creative Writing, and hopefully a future MFA. Their writing instructors in university have been exceedingly encouraging and helpful.

Arcade now focuses their stories on queer, transgender, and polyamorous characters, putting them in stories that aren’t just about their identity. Arcade found that they were polyamorous in 2013 at age 25, came out as pansexual in 2015 at age 27, and realized they were non-binary at 31 in 2019.

For most of their life Arcade never quite understood the relationships they would see. None of it seemed to make much sense, and it wasn’t until they talked to their friend and fellow author Taylor Prescott that they discovered that polyamory and consensual non-monogamy were a thing, (their friendship is an interesting story, ask them sometime). This was a revelatory experience. It then became a long journey of discovering what polyamory would mean for themself. One of the things that really hit home for them was a Kimchi Cuddles Comic.

When they realized they were non-binary what helped them come out was seeing others like themself. Members of some of their favorite bands were non-binary, people they felt connected to and could see themself in.

Coming to terms with their pansexuality was a matter of disowning the Christian indoctrination of their childhood. But we shouldn’t discount the revelation that was discovering the term Pansexuality for the first time. Bisexual never quite felt right – though admittedly the current definition of bisexuality does fit better than what the dictonaries told us years ago, regardless of how the bisexual community felt about it.

Because of all this, Arcade wants to give people in the LGBTQ+ and Polyamorous communities more representation. The representation Arcade wishes they had earlier in life.