It's always about breasts. Phryne's ancient breasts were apparently so fantastic, the jury forgave her sin. "Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times," Proverbs 5:19 implores, "and be thou ravished always with her love." My perfume spills Bulgarian roses down my shirt. "And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes," Molly Bloom gushes, "I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes." 

Video games tore spacetime apart and gave breasts their own physics. Through the galaxies, through the memories, when I wanted to be a woman, as a child, I'd pop on plastic sunglasses and fill my tank top with paper towels. If you crumple them just right, you can create two convincing, collapsed ant hills. I was proud of my diseased A-cups, demonstrating their humble dips and sockets to myself in the mirror, until my mom walked in. But Gwynevere, Dark Souls' Princess of Sunlight, doesn't get embarrassed. 

One day, my ex-boyfriend walks into her bedchamber. When I see the violin curves of her body, I feel jealousy wringing my neck, and I want to cover my ex's eyes. He's a boob guy. Around this time, even ass guys wilted in the shadow of the breast renaissance, led by "mommy milkers," "big naturals," and Sydney Sweeney's appearance on TV. Gwynevere is Sydney Sweeney of Troy; she lounges with Grecian ease, with embossed gold cuffs clasped around her wrists and arms, fox-red hair like Aphrodite, and huge Playboy titties. 

According to Dark Souls Wiki, Gwynevere has unmistakable cantaloupe boobies because she is a dream. Eroded stone statues in Dark Souls III suggest the real Gwynevere, a lost, holy queen of birth and warmth, was of more humble chest size. So what am I upset about? Her sibling, the wraithlike Dark Sun Gwyndolin, created a honey mirage to entice the player. That's all. Players who aren't convinced — because they have curiosity, or because they hate the women they desire — react poorly, beaming a single arrow into Gwynevere's forehead, dissolving the dream like a sugar cookie in hot milk. Once Gwynevere disappears, the sun sets permanently in pearlescent Anor Londo. The castle's cream-colored stairs and pillars look fossilized in the dark, like sand, like a cold cloud of breath. 

I know these consequences. For now, Dream Gwynevere is leaning across her chaise longue like a perfect slab of yellow marble. I lean towards the screen.

God, my skin could never be that poreless. My proportions are nowhere near that impressive. Is Gwynevere the size of, like, a rocket ship? I bet she could scale an office building like King Kong. Imagine being a sensual Leviathan… I wear Tevas. 

I recognize that it's unnatural to covet the unnatural — not every mouse wishes it were gold, the ocean throws up all of our soda cans, and "love at first sight" is a filterable keyword. But I've always wanted to look more like a statue of a woman than like a real one. Once, against the toothpaste-stained mirror, I imagined my face with my freckles rearranged — more on the lips than on the nose. I relaxed my shoulders as a test — swanlike or gnomish? I don't know. I love beauty more than I accept it. 

So shyly, through my eyelashes, I look again at Gwynevere, her breasts bobbing affably with her words: "Come hither, child…" I remember a Sappho fragment I like: "I liken you [...] among mortal women, know this [...] from every care [...] you could release me." And I encourage my ex to kill her; he obliges. 

Gwynevere is no longer competition, and I can be a woman again. She's a ghost. She's impossible. She exists better in someone else's head. Well, I guess I know what that's like.